by Rose Zwi
Ruth went inside, darted around the breakfast room table and opened the top drawer of the chest of drawers. Under a cotton petticoat she found the little black purse. She was almost out of the room when she stopped, shook the purse, then opened it cautiously. There were two half crowns, a shilling and a sixpence. With a beating heart she took the shilling out of the purse. She held it in her palm for a few seconds, then hurriedly put it back again, running outside where Gittel stood on the pavement next to a large covered ox wagon.
‘How much?’ Gittel asked the sunburned man as he stepped off the wagon.
‘Two shillings a bucket, a big bucket,’ he answered in a thick voice. Three and six for two buckets, big buckets.’
‘Three shillings,’ Gittel bargained, walking towards the back of the wagon, followed by Ruth.
A smell of dry grass, dung and peaches rose from the dark interior of the wagon. The nearest half of the wagon was filled with small yellow peaches. Behind the peaches sat a thin woman in a dirty cotton dress, feeding a baby. Ruth watched with curiosity as the mother held her long sagging breast to the infant’s mouth. There were three other children in the wagon, the biggest of whom climbed over the peaches and jumped off. He wore a pair of khaki shorts and a torn shirt which had once been white. His feet were caked with dirt and he had a running sore on his knee.
‘Got some bread?’ he asked Ruth quietly.
She nodded and went into the house. On the kitchen table stood half a white loaf. She walked out with the bread behind her back. Gittel might shout, though she herself gave bread to the black piccanins who came to the door.
‘Give him, give him,’ Gittel said as Ruth approached the wagon slowly. ‘Business is business and I’m not paying more than three shillings for the peaches. But the family must eat. Bring out the brown loaf also. I’ll get fresh bread from Hershl later on.’
The boy tore off a piece of bread and climbed onto the wagon again. He was waiting for Ruth at the gate when she came out with the other loaf.
The father did not appear to have seen anything. He carried the peaches into the house for Gittel, climbed onto the wagon and the boy led away the oxen.
‘It’s very hard,’ Ruth told Dovid when he came home that evening. ‘Some things I don’t understand. Like A is for eppel. B is for benana, that’s all right. But C is for cat? C is for semitches or, or,’ she searched the kitchen for a suitable word, ‘C is for saucer. I don’t understand.’
‘Don’t worry. Just listen and you’ll understand in time. I also say A is for eppel. But one day you’ll say it correctly. For me it’s too late to learn.’
After supper Raizel and Berka came to the house. Berka gave Ruth a beery kiss.
‘Is Bobbe Yenta cross with you?’ she asked crinkling up her nose.
‘No,’ he laughed, ‘I didn’t kiss her so she didn’t smell the beer on my breath. Everything she knows, this child. So, how was school?’
She told them about the lessons, about her new friend and about Miss Greenblatt’s anger with Daniel. She omitted only the incidents of the blue broekies and of Paul Stern kicking the dog.
‘It is written,’ Berka said angrily when he heard Daniel’s question about Adam and Eve. ‘Holy. It is written. Don’t question the Bible. The first thing they learn in school is don’t question. Tell me, Ruthie, what do you most want to learn at school?’
‘Words,’ she said gravely. ‘I want to know the names of everything. Miss Greenblatt said that Adam gave names to all the cattle and all the fowls and all the beasts. I want to know them all.’
‘You will,’ Berka assured her. ‘I’ve never known a woman who was at a loss for words. Don’t tell Miss Greenblatt I said so but personally I think it was Eve, not Adam, who gave everything names. And I’m sure she had names for Adam himself that they wouldn’t dare print in the Bible.’
When Dovid tucked Ruth into bed later that evening she asked:
‘Tatteh, how do you say schnaider in English? I want to tell Mavis tomorrow what you do. Her father is a foreman on the mines.’
‘Tailor,’ he told her. ‘And now sleep my child. You’ve had a busy day.’
For a while she lay in the dark repeating her lessons softly to Zutzke. ‘A is for eppel…serpent…tree of…’ She forgot what kind of tree it was but it did have apples on it. ‘Present please…hungry, hun-gry…clean, washed and paid for…’
Then she sat up. Tomorrow after school she was going to buy chips with Mavis. She crept quietly out of bed and tip-toed to the chest of drawers. She opened it carefully, took out the black purse and felt in the dark the half crown and the shilling. She took out the shilling, tied it into her handkerchief as she had seen Yenta do, then put it under her pillow.
If she fell asleep quickly, tomorrow would come sooner.
10
‘She’ll be a different child now that she’s at school,’ Berka said when Dovid returned to the veranda. ‘She’s been with adults too much and has soaked up all their troubles. The child understands more than we think.’
‘Indeed she does,’ Dovid said sitting down on a chair opposite Raizel. If he stretched out his hand he could smoothe out the frown from her forehead. ‘Has Benjamin left yet?’
‘He leaves tomorrow, may he go in good health,’ Berka said. ‘What did the doctor say about him, Gittel?’ He turned to his sister-in-law who was standing in the doorway.
‘Poor Benjamin. The veins around his heart are calcified. He must lose weight and he must get stronger glasses, he’s half blind. All alone in that dorp with no one to look after him. That’s a life?’
‘I’ve got a match for him,’ Berka said drily. ‘A woman with several daughters whom he can treat like his own. If he hadn’t gone to the doctor I’d never have believed that he had a heart, even a calcified one.’
‘Berka!’ Gittel said reproachfully.
‘Come for a stroll to our house, Gittel. Let’s see how Yenta’s bottling is getting on. I hear you also bought peaches today. Are you coming home, Raizel?’
‘Later, Dad. I want a book from Dovid.’
Gittel looked from Dovid to Raizel, then sat down on the chair Berka had vacated.
‘I won’t come, Berka,’ she said opening her newspaper. ‘I’m tired. Today was washing day and the girl had to be watched all the time. I must also finish reading the “Americaner” by tomorrow. That’s when I pass it onto Chaya.’
‘No is no,’ Berka shrugged. ‘There were times when the ladies liked to walk with me. I must go and rescue Joel from that bore Benjamin. Since supper he’s been closeted up in his room with the holy man. Poor boy, he must be crazy with boredom already.’
‘Have you got another book for me?’ Raizel asked Dovid sulkily.
She was frustrated by Gittel’s stolid presence and angered by Dovid’s helplessness. This was not how she imagined love. She wanted to be pursued, swept off her feet and borne away by a masterful man who would deal adequately with a suspicious mother-in-law. Dovid simply sat there looking at her with big soulful eyes, as Ruth had done that morning, doing nothing, saying nothing, accepting his fate. More than that: shaping his fate. He would never leave Sheinka; they would never become lovers; she would never be a part of his life.
‘Try this one,’ Dovid said. ‘I took it out of the library last week but the humour’s beyond me. Dickens’s serious novels I understand but ‘Piekviek Papers’ is beyond me. I don’t understand English humour.’
You don’t understand any humour, Raizel wanted to scream. You don’t know how to laugh at all, especially at yourself. “Piekviek Papers.” Why did I ever imagine myself in love with you?
As she took the book his slender hands enclosed hers. She flushed deeply and turning to Gittel said:
‘Good night, tante Gittel.’
‘Good night, my child,’ Gittel smiled benignly. She had become so engrossed in the latest instalment of ‘The Dark Stranger’ that she had forgotten her vigil. Nothing moved her as much as a sad love story.
Dovid
went into the lounge and pressed his head against the sofa. The smell of Raizel’s hair had all but gone. He must end this madness. Raizel was both kinswoman and strange fruit. If ‘Pickwick Papers’ was alien to him, how much more so was she? She had something of the pagan in her and her strong but mistaken passions recognised no boundaries. And what was love without compassion or obligation? More was involved than the practical difficulties of leaving a wife and children. She did not understand that the very act of deserting Sheinka would poison their relationship. Could one build a life on a despicable act, he had asked her. Can one build a life on a lie, she countered.
Poor misguided child. Love in her eyes condoned everything. I’ll be your mistress, she offered, speaking like a character from a romantic novel. Dovid smiled at the sheer absurdity of the idea. In books, at least, lovers were conveniently provided with private incomes and with a place where they could meet. He could not even exchange a few words with Raizel without his mother-in-law breathing down his neck. Should he perhaps take a monthly loan from Steinberg the butcher and rent an apartment?
They belonged to different, irreconcilable worlds. He could not even say to her ‘I love you’; it sounded false to his ears. ‘Ich lieb dir’ would fall strangely on hers. When he spoke Yiddish to her she often looked puzzled, as though he were a stranger. When he spoke English, he felt bereft of dignity as he slurred his ‘r’s’, mispronounced the ‘a’, and hesitated over the ‘th’.
But beyond the verbal barrier lay a deeper problem. He was not even sure that love meant the same thing to them. His doubts were reinforced when he listened to her records. ‘I can’t give you anything but love, ba-by!’
What had this to do with the way he felt about Raizel; the anguish, the desire, the hopelessness of it all?
‘Tatteh! Tatteh!’ Ruth called out, ‘Please come. I’m having bad dreams again.’
Dovid sat on the bed with her and stroked her damp brow.
‘It was horrible,’ she said drawing close to him. ‘A big black snake came out of the peaches in the wagon and bit the baby, and although I was watching I knew that the baby was me. Don’t go away. Sing me a song and stay till I fall asleep. I’m afraid of that black snake.’
He lay down beside her and sang softly.
Wie ken ich in finstern wald,
Fargessen die liebe zu dir?
Dermon ich mir dain gestalt,
Ervekt zich a weitik in mir…
How can I in this dark wood,
Forget my love for you,
Your image haunts my memory
And re-awakens the pain in my heart.
When Ruth woke the next morning she slipped her hand under the pillow: the money was still there. She dressed quickly, slipped the knotted-up money into her bloomers and went into the kitchen where Gittel was reluctantly cutting thin sandwiches for her.
‘New fashions,’ she said wrapping the sandwiches in a piece of brown paper.
Ruth walked slowly along the school path. It was still early but the sun was already hot. She stopped at a bush of four o’clocks and plucked the half-open flowers off the stems, threading them onto a long piece of grass. This necklace will be for Mavis, she decided as she tied the succulent end of the grass to its flowering head. With her case in one hand and the necklace in the other, she walked slowly through the veld, humming softly to herself. As she approached the school she felt a momentary stab of anxiety, but when she remembered that after school she was going to buy chips with Mavis, she walked on resolutely. She looked down at her necklace of four o’clocks. Perhaps Mavis would think it a silly present. She hesitated, then threw it into the grass.
‘Are you coming to me after school?’ Mavis asked as they walked into the classroom.
‘Yes,’ Ruth replied. ‘I got money from Bobbe Gittel. For chips.’
In spite of her impatience for their adventure to begin, school passed quickly and pleasantly. In Bible class they heard the story of Noah and his Ark. Daniel sat silently through the lesson and when Miss Greenblatt invited questions, he looked out of the window.
After they had repeated their lesson to Miss MacCarthy’s satisfaction, she handed them small squares of rough black paper and a few pastels. She walked up and down the aisles, stopping every now and again to look at a drawing. Ruth was completely absorbed in her work. She drew two yellow mine dumps in one corner and a yellow sun with rays shining out of a horizontal strip of blue sky. Next to the mine dumps she drew two green trees with bunches of red cherries in them.
‘Very good,’ Miss MacCarthy said. ‘Very good indeed, Ruth.’
She held it up for everyone to see, turning it this way and that. Ruth dropped her head; her heart was bursting with joy.
‘You can take it home to show your mother,’ Miss MacCarthy said, ‘and tomorrow we’ll pin it onto the wall.’
At playtime she and Mavis sat down on the rock under the trees. From a distance she saw Paul playing football with the other boys. Once, when the ball rolled near them he retrieved it and called out, ‘Hello Gingey. How’s the dog?’ Ruth looked away angrily. The poor stray was nowhere to be seen.
‘Bully!’ Mavis said softly when he was out of earshot.
Ruth felt loved and protected.
‘Your sandwiches smell nice,’ Mavis said. ‘I’ll change one with you.’
Ruth gave Mavis the thinnest of her schmaltz sandwiches but remembering Gittel’s warning, refused to accept one in return.
‘I’m not hun-gry,’ she said, pleased with her pronunciation.
‘I’m not hungry,’ Mavis corrected.
Ruth was puzzled. Then why did she take the schmaltz sandwich?
After school they walked to Mavis’s house. It was a small corrugated iron cottage which was surrounded by a well-kept garden. The interior was dark and hot, in spite of the open windows.
‘Ma’s gone to the shops,’ Mavis’s sister told her. She was a tall blond girl with a thick plait hanging down her back. ‘You’re to take the fried fish from the ice chest and have a glass of milk. There’s only one piece left so you’ll have to share.’
‘I don’t want lunch. We’re going to buy chips at Davis’s. And you can’t come with us,’ Mavis taunted. ‘Ruth’s got money.’
‘She never shares with me,’ Mavis said as they walked over the veld towards Main Street.
Ruth was overjoyed. This was even better than having your own sister.
She waited outside the shop while Mavis bought the chips. Faint misgivings stirred in her as she watched Ron Davis fry the chips. Perhaps the oil was dirty; perhaps it wasn’t kosher.
But when Mavis came out of the shop with the newspaper packet, the smell of chips smothered in vinegar and salt dispelled all her qualms. They did not open the packet until they reached the narrow backstreet to the north of Main Street which ran parallel to the railway line. Each took a turn in holding the chips and they ate slowly, savouring each one. As Ruth pressed the chips against her palate with her tongue, she thought that she had never eaten anything as delicious before. While she ate she talked rapidly and at great length. If Mavis did not always follow her, she gave no sign of it.
When they had worked down to the bottom of the packet, Mavis licked her fingers, crumbled the paper into a ball and threw it over the fence onto the railway line. They watched until a train passed over it, then returned over the veld to Mavis’s house, playing trip knots all along the way.
With her drawing in her case and with a lightness of heart such as she had never felt before, Ruth returned home. Her only regret was that she had not saved a chip for Zutzke who sniffed at her hands.
‘Take your tings and voetsek from here!’ she heard Gittel shout in the backyard. ‘Choleria, genavte! A kraink zol dir avekleigen!’
‘I didn’t take it missis. ‘Strues God. I didn’t take it. Come setch my room.’
‘Voetsek from here!’ Gittel raved, ignoring Ruth at her side.
Dora ran to her room, crying loudly and bitterly.
‘The thief!’ Gittel said walking breathlessly up the steps. ‘Yesterday she must have heard me tell you where I keep my purse. When I went to my chestadraw just now I found a shilling missing.’
Ruth felt a sick lurch in her stomach.
‘Perhaps she didn’t take it, Bobbe. Perhaps you spent the money and forgot. Or lost it.’
‘So rich I am that I don’t know how much money I’ve got? A shilling is missing I tell you. Go and watch that she doesn’t steal anything from the washing line. The dishcloths are still hanging there.’
Waves of nausea flowed through Ruth. She went into the backyard and crept into Dora’s room where she was packing her clothes into a cardboard box, crying all the time.
‘Miss Ruth, I’m not a tief,’ she said between sobs. ‘I didn’t touch the missis’ money. Ai, ai, ai. She said she not pay the month and will call a poleesman. It’s a long jenny home. No job, no money. Ai, ai, ai.’
Ruth felt she was choking. This was the first time she had been in Dora’s room. It was small, dark and stuffy and smelled of gutted candle and smoke. An iron bed stood in one corner, raised from the floor by three bricks under each foot. Above the bed, on the rough unpainted wall, hung a small unframed picture of Jesus Christ on the cross, with blood streaming from his pierced hands and legs. On the cement floor next to the bed was a large wooden box on which stood an enamel plate with a few crusts of dry bread on it. A chipped enamel cup lay on the floor, next to a broken candle stick.
‘My chetch says, do not steal. Jesus Christ,’ Dora appealed to the picture above her bed, rolling her eyes until Ruth saw only the whites. ‘Jesus Christ, saver, carer for your children, I promist I didn’t pinch the money.’
Ruth ran out of the room and came into the kitchen white-faced with distress.
‘Bobbe, I took the shilling. I took it to buy chips for Mavis and me. Here, smell my hands. They still smell of chips and vinegar.’
‘Leave me alone you silly child. You don’t have to feel sorry for that thief. If she can steal a shilling she can empty out the whole house. She must go.’