by Rose Zwi
She preferred not to think of Zutzke; she’d been an accomplice in his disappearance. One day she’d heard Sheinka speak to Avremala the poultry vender about taking Zutzke away. He’s a danger to the health of my baby, she told him. His hairs give Phillip asthma. Avremala had shrugged, grabbed the squealing Zutzke by the scruff of his neck and stuffed him into an empty chicken cage. The squawks of the chickens and Zutzke’s terrified yelps still rang in Gittel’s ears. For weeks Ruthie had run through the streets looking for her dog. Berka, like everybody else, believed Zutzke had run away.
‘Sheinka, I notice, isn’t upset by the loss of Zutzke,’ Berka said looking carefully at Gittel. ‘Nachas from parents. Has it ever struck you Gittel, that we parents often get what we deserve? And it’s not nachas I’m talking about.’
‘Berka, what are you saying? I’m dropping my stitches. Eina links, eina rechts…’ She manipulated the four needles with deft fingers, then folded up the knitting.
‘Don’t go,’ Berka said. ‘It’s not often that I have an intelligent audience.’
‘Teasing me again,’ Gittel replied but she sat down. ‘I remember when you had an intelligent audience. You and Hershl and Dovid used to sit out there on the veranda in summer and for hours the whole street would ring with your discussions. In those days the streets smelled of gefilte fish and tzimmes and other things. Now it smells of bacon. Those were the good years.’
‘When we lived in the good old days, we were forever evoking other good old days.’
‘You know what I mean. The children were young and we were all together…’
‘I know what you mean, Gittel, and I’ve also had longings for the good old days. I miss, among other things, those talks on the veranda. Only Hershl had an inkling of what was happening. All Dovid wanted was to get back to the old country and make his revolution. But I was also wrong. Correction. I wasn’t wrong; Hershl was right.’
‘Berka, you’ve been marvellous just to survive all your troubles. I’d have been in a madhouse by now.’
‘I don’t know, Gittel. Things are changing too fast for me to keep up. I don’t recognise the new Afrikaners. Just listen to what they’re saying these days,’ Berka said picking up the newspaper from the floor. “Hitler is not a barbarian. He is like Dr. Malan, who tries only to liberate his people… General Smuts is an imperialist who’s making us fight England’s wars… We and the Germans are the only true Aryans.” And so on and so forth. I’m beginning to feel like a stranger in this terrifying new world.’
‘Berka,’ Gittel said getting up. ‘Come over to our house sometimes. Dovid is as lonely as you. You can forgive him already.’
‘We greet each other,’ Berka said stiffly. ‘Some things just, just die, I suppose.’
‘Come anyway. I must go now. If I don’t prepare lunch there won’t be any. Sheinka’s too busy with that spoilt brat of hers who’s got the mumps.’
Ruth tiptoed into the house to fetch her silver paper ball. She did not want Sheinka to hear her. On the way out she peeped into the bedroom through the half-closed door. Phillip, whose swollen face was bandaged, was leaning against Sheinka as she paged through the photo album.
‘And when you’re bigger you’ll also play the fiddle,’ she was saying. ‘I’ll buy you a little black velvet suit and a white blouse with a round collar. You’ll put the fiddle under your chin, just like this man in the picture, and you’ll play the most beautiful sad songs. I only hope you’ll have a better fate than he had, poor man. Such a woman…’
‘I don’t want a fiddle,’ Phillip whimpered. It’s sore under my chin. I want a motor car.’
A glass wall seemed to descend between them. Sheinka and Phillip drew further and further away until Ruth could barely hear them. The ache in her chest dissolved and was replaced by a frantic beating of her heart. As she stretched out her fingers, the glass wall receded. With her head spinning she turned away and went into her room.
She threw herself onto the bed and repeated feverishly: I am Ruth Erlich. I am Ruth Erlich. I go to Rand Mines Primary School and next year I’ll be at High School. It’s all right. It’ll go away. This glass wall always melts away. Breathe slowly… Slowly… Think of ordinary things, of ordinary things…
Had she been a baby she would have called out to her father. But she was big now; her father didn’t sing any more and her own throat closed up tightly as she was about to call him.
Think of ordinary things, she whispered urgently as she felt herself fading away again. If she went too far away she might never come back. Think, think. Tomorrow Daniel would walk to school with her again. He’d wait outside his gate, pretending to tie up his shoe laces or to look for something in his school bag. Then she’d come out of the house and he’d follow her to the veld and they’d walk together, silently often, but she knew he was her friend. You can play with our cats any time you like, he offered when Zutzke disappeared.
Zutzke, Zutzke. Where was he now? Starving in the veld? Dead? She used to fall asleep at night holding him close to her and the comfort of his warm, somewhat smelly body kept her nightmares away.
The pain in her chest started up again and the glass wall began to lift. She thrust her head into her pillow and cried bitterly.
Everything looked strange and distant as she walked out of the house, clutching her silver paper ball. She walked through the damp veld along the path that led to the school and to Mavis’s house. It had rained the previous evening and the puddle was there again, as it had been on her first day of school. Raizel had jumped over it and said ‘Mind the puddle!’ Impatiently. One image followed another in rapid succession: Raizel fetching her from hospital after her tonsils operation; Raizel clutching her unbuttoned blouse in Dovid’s workshop; Raizel standing behind Berka in the lounge, crying softly while her mother screamed on the sofa. That was the first time the glass wall had come down. She had been sitting on the floor with Zutzke, feeling frightened and somehow responsible for what was happening. Then suddenly they all seemed far away. She felt safe from them behind the glass wall.
Mavis was waiting for her impatiently outside her house.
‘I thought you were never coming,’ she said drawing Ruth away towards the veld. ‘Let’s go to our den. I’ve got so much to tell you. There’s no time for collecting silver paper today.’
They walked over to a clump of blue gums whose enormous trunks had been partially destroyed by a veld fire. Mavis withheld her secret until they were seated on a fallen trunk.
‘Thelma told me the secret. She’s known it for a long time. When you’re about thirteen you start to bleed. From your wee,’ she said impatiently when Ruth looked puzzled. ‘It’s very sore. Sometimes it happens earlier, sometimes later,’ she added knowledgeably.
Ruth turned pale and squeezed the silver paper ball tightly in her hand.
‘But why? Why?’
‘So’s you can have babies of course,’ Mavis said, surprised that Ruth did not see the connection. ‘And Thelma said you mustn’t let a boy touch you because you’d have a baby. Nor must you play with yourself, you know how.’
Ruth’s heart beat uncomfortably. She panicked even when her nose bled.
‘All the time? Does it bleed all the time?’ she asked anxiously.
‘No, silly. Only for a week a month. My mother’s made bandages for Thelma and she has to wash them every day.’
She looked critically at Ruth’s tiny breasts which were barely visible under her blouse. Then she touched her own rounded breasts proudly.
‘You’re not well enough developed to get your periods yet,’ she said. ‘That’s what it’s called. Periods. I’ll start before you.’
Whom could she ask, Ruth wondered as she walked home. Who would explain? Gittel would say such things were not for the ears of young girls. Her mother would shout and make her feel ashamed. Raizel would have told her. She was the only one she might have turned to.
The sun shone fiercely out of a pale blue sky and the veld seemed grey and end
less. The suburb, the mine dumps, the plantation and the dam looked still and distant, like a painting against a blue wall.
Ruth walked wearily over the veld and felt as though she was the only being on earth.
The following morning Ruth opened her eyes slowly, fearfully. Her grandmother’s feather bed was still unmade, her school books lay scattered on the table where she had left them the previous evening and a soft breeze blew the curtains open, bringing in the smell of damp earth.
She closed her eyes and sighed with relief.
All was well. It had been a nightmare, a terrible nightmare. Her consciousness lapped around the edges of her dream, throwing up an image here and there, but the dream itself receded and left her with the bitter dregs. If only she could remember.
She lay back and listened to the sound of hushed voices from the kitchen. That was Chaya Schwartzman speaking. A stab of recognition went through her. Chaya had been in her dream. She must remember, she must remember.
She had lain in the hot dark room last night, unable to sleep. Now and again she heard the sound of distant thunder, then a wind blew up, parting the curtains and revealing a purple turbulent sky. An empty sky. God was not there for her any more. When she was small she had prayed to him through the gap in the curtains: Please stop my parents from fighting; let my mother love me; send away Phillip forever; let me find Zutzke. But the sky was as empty as Zeide Berchik’s veld.
She could not fall asleep. Just once more, she promised herself, then I’ll never do it again. She moved her hand slowly over her flat stomach, towards her rising breasts, then down again towards her thighs… Blood! Soon there would be blood spurting from there. She shuddered. After much tossing and turning she finally fell into a restless sleep.
As she did, there was a roar of planes in the sky. Bombs fell and flashes of fire lit up the dumps and dam. People streaked with blood ran screaming through the streets. She looked at the foot of her bed. Zutzke was gone. She had to find Zutzke. He’d be killed if she didn’t find him. Her movements were slow and heavy; her need to find Zutzke urgent. She walked numbly out of the cluttered up room, into the dark passage, towards the front door. She lifted the latch and stepped onto the veranda.
Zutzke! She tried to call but no sound came from her throat. She watched the planes zoom into the distance and disappear but the sky still flashed with fire. The stones pricked her bare feet as she walked slowly, doggedly, towards Leib Schwartzman’s house. She rang the bell once, twice, a third time. The lights went on in the passage and Chaya Schwartzman stood before her, clutching her night gown to her throat.
‘Mrs. Blackman,’ Ruth said then forgot what she had come about. Was it for the big black pot her grandmother wanted for taiglach? ‘Mrs. Blackman,’ she began again. There’s been an air raid and I’m looking for Zutzke. He ran away from home. He could be killed.’
The voices from the kitchen, no longer hushed, could be heard clearly in her room.
‘It’s not so terrible Sheinka. Don’t take on so. If it is a kind of madness, it’s only temporary. It happened to Sora-Riva’s daughter as well. She didn’t walk, she used to sing in her sleep. Also at that age…’
Ruth began to cry softly. It had not been a dream. She remembered now. The veranda had felt wet and cold to her feet as she looked into the shocked faces of Chaya and Leib. He put his jacket over her shoulders and led her gently back to her house. The pavement had been wet and muddy…
Ruth threw off her blankets and looked down at her feet. They were caked with mud. The sheets were dirty. Stiff with horror she listened to the conversation from the kitchen. ‘I’m to blame.’ Sheinka was crying. ‘I should never have taken the dog away from her.’
‘Don’t blame yourself. It’s not the dog,’ Chaya comforted her. ‘I’m telling you. Some girls take it harder than others. Once she starts menstruating she’ll become normal again. The blood boils and flows wildly through the body until it’s time to break out. And of course, when the moon is full you must shut all the curtains. That brings on the walking. And put a bowl of cold water at the foot of her bed…’
‘I’m mad, I’m mad!’ Ruth bit into her pillow to stop herself from screaming. ‘I’ll never be like other girls. God! Why did you let me born?’
17
Dovid stood under the recently installed, sole neon sign in Mayfontein which flashed out: ‘Sharp’s (Pty) Ltd., Confectioners of Distinction.’ It was Saturday morning and the shop was crowded. He weighed up the possibility of passing through unnoticed towards the back exit which led to the new bakery. The chances were slim, he decided. At the counter nearest the door Sora-Riva Sher was slicing brisket under a rail of polonies, sausage and smoked meat.
‘Honestly,’ her customer complained loudly. ‘It’s months since I’ve seen a piece of Scotch salmon. There’s a war on, like everybody says, but the snoek is coming out of my ears already. And they say that for money you can buy anything.’
Dovid gagged and moved away from the door. He would take the long way around to the offices. As he passed Leib’s old smithy he recalled Hershl’s plans for converting it into a tea room. He had given up the idea when he built the bakery. Dovid glanced across at Berka’s workshop before he turned into Lover’s Lane. The last stood idle and Berka sat at his bench, reading a newspaper. He looked up, caught Dovid’s eye, nodded, then turned back to his paper. It was the first time they had seen one another since Dovid moved out of Mayfontein eight months ago. He had not wanted to move but Ruth was miserable after the news of her sleepwalk had spread through the suburb. The children teased her, the adults treated her like an idiot child. Yenta lent them money —I’m doing it for my sister Gittel, she told Dovid when he demurred—and they moved over the hills into an orange brick suburb. Ruth, at least, was happy now.
Dovid turned into Lover’s Lane, then into a large asphalt square at the back of Sharp’s which divided the shop from the two-storey building that housed the bakery and the offices. Six large vans were parked outside a section marked ‘Despatch’ and teams of black men were packing bread into the shelving of the vans.
Like animals they were herded into vans, tightly packed so that they could hardly breathe. Not that it mattered; they would not breathe for long anyway. Children cried, mothers panicked and the frightened men prayed. To whom? They arrived at their destination blue-lipped, soiled, dead.
Dovid’s palms sweated and his breathing came in heavy, uneven gasps. He must take a hold on himself, present a calm, sane front to Hershl. He stood in the middle of the square and watched some black men unload a miller’s truck piled high with bags of flour. Two of them lowered a heavy bag onto the back of a third. With a heave and a grunt the men walked slowly up a ramp into the bakery’s store. As he went by Dovid saw that his face was powdered with flour. It clung to his short curly eyelashes and eyebrows, emphasising features not readily seen on a black face. Dovid suppressed a surge of hysterical laughter which bubbled up to his throat.
‘Are you looking for someone, Mr. Erlich?’ a polite voice asked at his side. It was Dirk Venter, the chief baker. Dovid swallowed painfully and said:
‘Hello Dirk. I’ve come to see Mr. Singer, but I can’t find my way around.’
‘I’ll take you to the lift,’ Dirk offered. ‘It’s difficult to find if you don’t know the place. You see, the ground floor holds the stores and the despatch and the bread ovens…’
Ovens…
‘…and on the first floor is the confectionery. Are you not well, Mr. Erlich? You’ve suddenly gone so white. Here, sit down while we wait for the lift. You’ll find the offices on the second floor. Things have changed, eh? Do you remember those tiny wall ovens in the shop next door to Chidrawi? I worked alone then, with only Mr. and Mrs. Singer and a few kaffirs. Do you remember, Mr. Erlich?’
‘I remember.’ Dovid forced a smile as he stepped into the lift.
Berka and Hershl laughing in the doorway, Raizel cashing up. Go home Berka. I want to speak to Raizel. Something important to
say but forgotten what. Lost, lost. In the vans, in the veld…
‘Whom do you want to see?’ The telephonist looked suspiciously at Dovid. ‘Mr. Singer? He’s busy. Do you have an appointment?’
She rang through to Hershl’s office and announced with disapproval:
‘A Mr. Erlich to see you. He hasn’t got an appointment. Yes, Mr. Singer, yes, Mr. Singer.’
‘Sit down please,’ she said grudgingly. ‘Mr. Singer will see you soon. He has someone in with him at the moment.’
Dovid took the morning paper from a little table. It was some time before it made sense to him. Then he smiled. World-shaking events: A Nationalist meeting at the nerve-centre of the universe, Ermelo. Mr. Pirow of the New Order and Dr. Verwoerd of the Herenigde party had spoken from the same platform. Pirow wanted National Socialism in South Africa but an Afrikaner version, not the German kind. Political systems did not transplant readily; look at democracy in South Africa. Verwoerd differed from him on one point: He disliked the name National Socialism. Fastidious man. Dovid threw the paper back onto the table.
A fussy little man with a file under his arm walked towards the lift.
‘Go in now,’ the telephonist said to Dovid in a tone that indicated she’d have preferred him not to. ‘First office on the right.’
A long row of offices stretched down the corridor. ‘Accountant’, ‘Invoicing’, ‘Typists’, Dovid read. And on the frosted upper half of the first office on the right he saw ‘Harry M.Singer, Director’. He hesitated, looked towards the lift, then knocked.
‘Come in, Dovidke, come in. Since when do you knock on my door?’
Dovid walked in. Hershl sat behind an enormous glass-topped desk piled with papers and files. He was dressed in a dark suit which Dovid had made him last Rosh Hashana. He’s put on weight, Dovid noted: three inches to be let out of the waist. His balding head shone and his double chin spread around his face as he smiled up genially at Dovid.
‘Why do I knock?’ Dovid asked. ‘What else does one do before a gilded name plate? The Harry I understand, an English translation of Hershl, I suppose. But the ‘M’? What does that stand for? Money? Or were you on the point of death that they added a name for you in shul?’