Ishmael's Oranges (14 page)

Outside, the air was wetter and heavier than Salim had ever experienced.
How do people live here?
It was all so disorienting
–
the oppressive sky, the vastness of the airport, the rows and rows of cars shining in the gloom and the howl of traffic from the dozens of roads spinning off in every direction. It was nearly half an hour before they found the car and could be on their
way.

Driving through the rainy, busy streets, Salim listened with half an ear to Hassan's stories about his car repair shop, the exciting new projects they could start together and the girls they'd meet. When Hassan asked him what his plan was, he fingered the money in his pocket and said, without thinking, ‘Take a course in English, and try to get into university.'

‘University? What do you want to do that for? Believe me, Salim, you don't need all this studying rubbish. There's plenty of money to be made with me in the garage.'

Salim didn't answer. He watched the grey, endless concrete roll by outside the window and wondered how he was going to make his mark on it, make this alien country work for
him.

Eventually, they pulled up in a dirty little side-road under a railway bridge. By the crumbling buildings lining the road and the darkness of the faces walking down the street, Salim assumed they were in a poorer district, reserved for foreigners like him. Hassan heaved Salim's bag out of the trunk and dragged it over to a little brown door. It stood next to a shop selling Indian food, with a green and yellow illuminated sign blinking cheerlessly in the drizzle.

‘This is it!' Hassan said, as they reached the top of a dim, brown stairwell. ‘Not a palace, but cheap and very convenient. You'll
see.'

He pushed open the facing door and they entered a place smaller even than Tareq and Nadia's, with one bedroom and a small kitchen off the main living area with its spiral orange carpet. ‘You'll have to sleep on the sofa at first,' Hassan said. ‘But with the money you bring in, soon we'll be able to move to a bigger place! Right? You want a beer?'

Salim nodded, cold and tired to his bones. As Hassan went into the kitchen, he sat down on the brown sofa. It creaked and wobbled with his weight. Looking through tiny windows across the street, he saw a small, green park. A children's playground was at its centre, a striking patch of colours against the
grey.

Hassan brought him a can of beer and he cracked it open. It tasted strangely sweet and sharp against his throat. Children were playing in the park outside. He could see them, a misty blur of waving arms and bright clothes. They seemed a world away from him, there in that dirty little room. As he sipped his beer he had the strangest feeling of disconnection
–
as if he were not really there but just a character in an old film, sad and soundless, painted in the vivid colours of
loss.

Later Hassan sent Salim down to buy groceries
–
‘to get the hang of things'. He took Hassan's wallet, heavy with coins, and headed out under the drizzle. The streets were nearly empty, and the few people out walking passed quickly by him, heads down. There was nothing there, no flicker of recognition
–
they were all strangers caught in their own troubles, looking straight through each other. Homesickness swelled in his throat, trickling into him with the watery
cold.

The sign on the cornershop Hassan had directed him to said
Freddy's
. The shopkeeper looked up as Salim walked in to the jangle of warning bells, white bearded under a dull orange turban. Salim walked up and down the aisles, looking at the brands. He picked up the ones he recognized from the days of the British in Palestine, when Private Jonno would sneak him cigarettes. When his basket was filled it struck him as ludicrous that his English kitchen might be the closest he'd been in years to their pantry in Jaffa, to his mother and the English tea she used to drink, the imported biscuits she'd prized.

At the counter, he fumbled with the strange silver and bronze money, turning over coins in desperation as the queue behind him grew restless. A man behind him called out, but Salim couldn't understand the words. Perhaps it wasn't even English. Irritated, the shopkeeper pushed Salim's hand away and gathered coins and notes together himself, beckoning the next customer. Salim picked up his bags and went outside.

The rain was lifting, and the rolling clouds had changed from iron to shining steel and marble, brilliant at their edges. The bags weighed him down
–
but it was a start, just a start, he told himself. Everything else would come in
time.

As he walked down the brightening street, he heard the children again, high voices drifting above the sound of the traffic. They reached into Salim, pushing past his sorrow with their small song of delight.

As he saw them, just a touch away, he thought
–
there may be harvests to be reaped here too
. He stood there for a time, watching them while London moved past and around him in a blur of faces and car horns. And all the while the children chased each other with oblivious laughter, defying gravity as they swung round and round deliriously in the light
rain.

On the morning of Judith's Batmitzvah, she stood beside the Rebbe with her parents, dazed and resigned. Her portion of the Torah was committed to memory. Pieces of it had been flitting through her dreams for weeks, like bats under a dark
sky.

She was dressed for the part: a new skirt, heeled shoes, a smart blue shirt and a woollen waistcoat. Her nails and hair had been done the day before. She looked like a mini-Dora, or a doll that Dora might have picked out as a child.
It's all a game, dressing up and pretending
, she thought.
I'm not really a grown-up today and I won't be tomorrow either
.

Without warning, the door opened in the Rebbe's office; urgent voices were raised in the corridor and Judith saw Jack grip Dora's arm. The gesture was chilling, a stone falling from the dam around her heart, letting in a flood of sudden
fear.

A man in a yarmulke was saying, ‘Come quickly, she's just outside.' As if in a dream she trailed behind her parents as they raced to the front door. A wailing noise poured in from outside, a distorted, inexplicable sound. When the door opened and the light came in, she saw Gertie standing there, red with hysterics.

They ran the five hundred yards back to their little home, Jack and Dora ahead, Judith behind them, holding tight to Gertie's
hand.

From halfway there she could see the ambulance, its siren flashing without a sound. The silence was a terrible omen as she pounded the pavement in new heels, pain shooting up her
legs.

The front door was wide open and she stumbled in. A man stood in Rebecca's doorway, talking to Jack. Dora's mascara had run, and Judith heard the words
pneumonia
and
congestive heart failure
. Jack shook his head like a dog with water in its ears and Dora put her hand to her mouth.

Judith walked slowly up the stairs to stand beside her father. Jack's face was grey, tears pooling in the hollows of his cheekbones.

‘What's happening to Bubby?' she whispered.

It was Dora who spoke, her voice steady and
kind.

‘Your Bubby is leaving us, Judit. There's nothing we can do. She had a wonderful life. They want to take her to the hospital but your father thinks,' she reached out and took Jack's hand, ‘that she should stay here. It's what she would want.'

Judith nodded.
Be brave
.
Be a mensch
. ‘How long will she stay?' she asked.

‘Maybe a day or two, pet,' Jack said, hoarse. He was holding the top of his balding scalp, his hand clapped to the thin black yarmulke as if it pained him. Judith's starched hairdo itched at the sight. ‘Not more. She'll go to sleep soon and have her rest.'

‘Can I see
her?'

Jack looked at Dora. Her mother nodded. ‘It's right you should see her, Judit. She loves you most of all, you know.'

Judith walked into the little room as she had done hundreds of times, seeking comfort. Now she would have to give
it.

Rebecca was lying on her pillows with an oxygen mask over her mouth. Her eyes were half-open and her mouth slack. The only colour on her body came from her Star of David necklace, still bright against the grey
skin.

In Judith's Torah lessons the Rebbe has said all kinds of things about the dignity of death. But there was no dignity here. Her grandmother looked defeated, life beaten out of her. The anger inside Judith frightened her; she felt fooled by them all. They told her she would grow up today, and everything would be better afterwards.
You know the day you can stop being afraid
, her grandmother had said.
The day you put down the Torah scrolls and the Rebbe blesses you as an adult
. But what was the point of it all, if Rebecca would not see
it?

Leaning forward, she took Rebecca's motionless hand in her own. It felt strange, empty somehow, as if a fire was burning Rebecca away from the inside, leaving nothing but heated bones and skin that crinkled like paper. ‘I'm here, Bubby,' she said. ‘Don't be afraid. We're all here.' Rebecca's eyes opened. Her pale red head turned towards Judith and she made a small noise, from deep inside her throat. The bony hand clenched and gently squeezed Judith's, the faint pressure of a feather landing on the ground. Then a doctor came between them, pushing Judith back and leaning over Rebecca until she vanished behind a wall of white coats.

Jack met her at the doorway. ‘Pet, we have to decide about the service and reception. We think we should cancel it. Your mother agrees. Everyone will understand.' Judith stood for an uncertain moment. Part of her wanted to cry with relief, to take off her coat and new shoes and be a child again. She closed her hand in a fist, her fingers curling around the memory of Rebecca's touch.

‘Can we wait?' she asked, finally. ‘I need to pray for Bubby.' It was a lie. If a God created such a world, one that stole so much from people, then Judith wanted no part of Him. But it was good enough for Jack. He passed his hand over his brow and said, ‘Of course. We have a little time.'

In the silence of her bedroom, Judith reached under the bed and pulled out the crumpled papers hidden there, beside the ripped pieces of the Junior Team Tryout schedule. Rebecca's writing leaned across the page like falling branches. Judith's eyes could not focus and she wiped them in frustration.
Be brave. Be a mensch.
She'd made a promise. Taking a deep breath, she felt the rest of the house fade away. Judith started to
read.

Later she came out onto the landing where Dora and Jack were talking in low, heavy voices. Gertie stood beside them, her arms wrapped around her waist.

‘Don't cancel the Batmitzvah,' she said. ‘I can do it. I want to do
it.'

‘Are you sure?' Jack said, astonished. Dora clapped her hand to her chest as if to calm her heart.

‘I'm sure,' said Judith, steady and without a trace of doubt. Her back was to Rebecca's room, and the light that came streaming in through its open door traced the determined lines of her
face.

Afterwards Judith remembered that coming-of-age day as a whirlwind of frantic phone calls, a blur of sympathetic handshakes at the reception and a dull sense of grief growing inside her like a young
tree.

She could not recall anyone familiar in the sea of people in front of her, even though Jack must have smiled at her from the front row and Dora and Gertie would have been wiping away tears beside him. The only clear memory, the single lasting picture in her mind, was woven of sound not sight. It was the sound of her own voice as she picked up the scrolls
–
the sound of singing as if other voices had sprung up inside her, singing her way out of fear and into the adult world.

Judit, my darling girl,

Today is your Batmitzvah – such a special day for you, to become a grown woman. I know that you will do everything so beautifully, and that you will make us proud. All this past year I have watched you work so hard to prepare – sometimes it felt like I was preparing too. I was not blessed with daughters until you came. So forgive me if I think of you as myself, my daughter and my granddaughter too. When you are old, you can't remember the when's and who's of life. But the real nature of things becomes much clearer. The truth is that you are all of this to me, and more.

When I was a child, it was traditional to give a boy a gift on his Barmitzvah, a piece of his inheritance. This way his family acknowledged he was no longer a child, but a pillar of his community, of our whole faith. I thought about what to give you, my Judit. There is only one piece of your inheritance that I hold for you. It's just this – the tale of my life, which is a part of your life too. I'm sorry if it's a poor gift. I hope one day you will feel that it was worthy of you.

You know my real name is not Rebecca at all. It is Rivka, in Hebrew. My papa chose it from the Torah. Rivka was the girl that Isaac married, who gave Abraham's servant water from the well. The Torah says that Abraham wanted to find the right wife for Isaac, but could not find any girl good enough. So he sent his servant further and further away until he and his camels were hot and tired. When he stopped to rest by a well, a girl came to him, even younger than you, to give him water for his thirst. She said if his camels were thirsty she would draw water for them too. She was so kind that she even had time to think about a thirsty camel.

I think that is why God chose her to be the mother of all the Jews. She was kind in her heart, which is what a mother must be. She also had to be brave, to leave her home and journey so far to find her place in life. So our stories are the same in some way. When I was on the ship coming here, and I cried for my mama and papa and my sister Etka, I thought about Rivka and it made me feel better.

When I was your age, my home was in Kishinev, in Imperial Russia. Those names have changed now, as all names do. It was a beautiful city – grand buildings inside and pine trees and roses outside. We used to say the birds came to Kishinev in summer because it was cool and stayed in winter for the warmth. My father put out food for them, so we could hear them sing.

We lived on a farm owned by my Uncle Simeon on Kishinev's outskirts. All Jews in the Pale of Settlement lived in Shtetls. My papa told me that Catherine the Great herded all of Russia's Jews into the Pale like sheep, and told them to stay there or die. It was hard for Jews then, my Judit. The Russians would take our little boys and force them into the army for all of their lives. Some mothers would cut the index finger off a son's hand, so they couldn't hold a gun. The new Tsar had passed new laws against us – they called them the May Laws, and they said no Jew could live with Christians, own land or go to Christian schools.

My Uncle Simeon was one of the lucky ones. His farm was too small to be noticed, and close enough to Kishinev to walk there in just five minutes. It fooled the Mayor, and we were safe. But we did not go to school. We learned at home, while Mama and Papa sewed clothes.

Etka, my sister, was nine years older, and she was fierce and quick. Really, I was afraid of her. She would slap me on the head if she thought I was too slow. I had a little brother too, Moshe, born when I was nine. He was a funny boy, always in trouble like your Uncle Alex, and smiling too. If he'd been a dog, his tail would have always been wagging. And there were my cousins – Isaac and Chayah were the same age as me, Gurta not yet old enough to read, and Benjamin the baby. Did you know that whenever I smell a fire burning, I think of them? That wood smoke smell was always with us in those days, from stirring the pot on the stove. It is the greatest sadness of my life that I left them, to be taken by the terrible flood that took us all.

This is the hardest part, my darling. It came in April in the third year of this century. I remember it was Easter Sunday for the Christians. I was eleven like you, just about to come of age. We were forbidden to work on Christian holidays, so we stayed at home and waited for the day to pass.

The first word of it was from Uncle Simeon. He came back from the town centre and said the Russians had left their churches and started marching in the streets. They said we had killed a boy in a town not far from us. Jewish doctors tried to save him, but he died anyway from a poison in his belly. But now the Russians were saying we killed him for his blood to make our matzos. I can't tell you how it disgusted me to hear that, Judit. Did they think we were monsters or pigs, to eat all manner of filth?

That day my mother was supposed to go to see our friend Navtorili at his shop on Stavrisky Street. She needed Navtor's candles for the next Sabbath meal. So she waited until the evening, when the Christians were having their Sunday dinner. Then she took Moshe with her and went into the town.

Well, we waited and waited for her. After dark, one of Navtor's sons came with a note. There was trouble, and Mama was too afraid to come. She stayed there, in Navtor's house. A thousand times since I've dreamed that she risked it, and came back after all. What would our lives be like now? It's pointless to wonder such things.

We spent that night in fear, and when dawn came, we saw smoke was coming from the town, dark and dirty. Papa wanted to go fetch Mama, but Ekta kept saying ‘Stay, she'll come.'

It was nearly noon when we heard the screaming. Isaac came running up the path towards the house. He said the Russians were coming up the hill with sticks and knives. When I thought of one of those knives going inside me, I went cold.

Papa and my uncle pushed us down into the cellar and locked it from the inside. I could see through the floorboards, as the men came into the house and began to break everything like mad dogs. They smashed until their sticks snapped. They tore the mezuzah off the door, broke all of our pots and threw the sewing machine on the floor. I heard the screams of the chickens outside as they killed them one by one.

I must have been afraid in that cellar, but all I remember is shame – at the stink on us, at how we hid like rats. I didn't feel like a mensch, like a human being. We had become animals, just like they said.

When we eventually came out, it took a while for us to stop being rats and have a human thought again. For a few minutes we just picked things up without any plan. Then Papa started shouting and crying for Mama. He could not wait any more to find her. I wanted to come with him. But he told us all to wait inside the house and hide. Etka stayed with us, standing inside our broken front door with an axe in her hand.

I think I knew in my heart she wasn't coming back, Judit. A daughter knows. I heard the screams and the weeping coming from far away, but I didn't know if it was real or a dream. Etka knew too. I saw the tears falling onto her axe as she stood there. Now I know what really happened was this: they came to Navtorili's shop at eleven o'clock in the morning, broke down the door and killed almost everyone inside. Mama died with Moshe behind her, and then they struck him down too. I don't want to know if Moshe smiled at them as they burst into the room, or if Mama cried. I want to remember them as I see them in my heart right now.

Nearly fifty people died that day in our beautiful Kishinev. We buried them in fear that we would be next. Moshe and Mama lay together in the same box. Two days later, Papa took Etka and me and left our home with a donkey and a cart. The fear, Judit, the fear of those knives and sticks drove us like whips. As for me, I sat on the cart and watched my cousins getting smaller and smaller, before vanishing as if they'd never existed.

Papa told me we were going to a place called Pinsk where we had relatives. He might as well have told me we were going to the moon. Can you imagine, I had never been out of Kishinev? Just a few miles out to the river and back. Now we had more than seven hundred miles to walk, right across the Pale, taking turns resting and pulling the donkey.

After a while, walking becomes like a dream you can't stop dreaming, and your legs even twitch in your sleep. Sometimes we slept in roadhouses and sometimes we slept on the cart. Etka used to shake her fist at the sky and say thank God this happened to us in summer. If it had been winter we would have died. There were other Jews on the road too. Some of them were heading north, like us. Others were going south, to Odessa. They were trying to get back to the holy land, they said, Palestine as it was called then. Etka said they were mad. God's promise is broken, she'd tell them. Better go forward than back.

I came of age on that cart, Judit, but no one noticed. There was no Batmitzvah then for girls, just added burdens. Etka remembered only after we reached Pinsk, and then scolded me for not reminding her. She gave me a hug and bought me a bowl of stew. I was so relieved that we could finally stop walking that I forgot about my coming-of-age as I ate it, and just thanked God for our safety.

I lived in Pinsk with Papa and Etka for five long years. You would think it would have become a home to me, but in truth I hated it. These relatives of ours were long gone, and the town was filling up with Jews just as afraid and poor as we were. Etka ran Papa's house, and I was like a maid – cooking and cleaning all day long. I think she was worried we might stop still like clockwork mice unless she wound us up every day. Perhaps she was right. Sometimes we would hear of a new pogrom somewhere, or there would be some ugliness in town, and my blood would freeze like puddles in winter. If it weren't for Etka, I think I would have slowed down and never started up again.

Then Papa died. Etka couldn't keep him wound up forever and one day his heart just stopped. She went into his bedroom to wake him in the morning, and there was just silence for a few seconds. Then she came back into the workroom where we slept, and said, ‘Papa's dead. Go fetch the Rebbe and let's see to his burial.' Straight away she started heating the pot of boiled dough we ate for breakfast. I don't think I cried then, to my shame. But later I cried when I remembered the smell of him, and how he used to chase Moshe and me, pretending to be a great forest bear.

After Papa was buried, Etka packed us up and said we were leaving. There's no future for us here, she told me. This is a dead place for Jews, she said, and even these rich Pinskers are just waiting around to become poor corpses. I did wonder where on earth we could go now. By then I was no longer a child. I was a woman of sixteen. Other girls of my age were married with children of their own. Etka, at twenty-five, was nearly old – and it showed in her face. I was a pretty girl and I remember thinking in my pride that Etka was a shrew. It wasn't until later, when I held my first son in my arms, that I realized she'd given up everything, every hope for herself, just to keep me safe.

We had no cart this time. So we made our way on foot nearly two hundred miles to Minsk. That was the first time I ever saw a train station, with all the Russian ladies and their fur hats. Our journey hadn't seemed real up to then, but afterwards I knew it was going to take us to a whole other life.

We bought a ticket to Libau on the Baltic Sea. Etka had heard bad stories about Russian guards waiting for Jews on the German border crossings. This was the easier way, but longer. The fare cost us five roubles – a lot of money in those days. Etka kept our money in a purse tucked inside her underclothes. She said she'd like to see the man brave enough to look for something there.

Our journey was standing up like cows squashed in with a lot of other cows. But it was better to have those iron wheels do the walking for us. Etka only spoke to me once that whole journey, digging my ribs with her elbow to say we had crossed into Litvak – Lithuania these days. I must have looked blank because she said, ‘Don't you know what that means, you idiot? We're outside the Pale.' Outside the Pale! It was such a thrilling sound. But the world looked much the same as before, only bigger and further from home.

We changed trains at Kovno and the next day's journey took us to Libau. This is where the Jews caught their ships out of Russia to the new worlds. Those Russian port towns are nothing like our own Sunderland. Libau frightened me. It was dirty and it smelt. Everywhere there were drunken men and bad women. We took a room at a boarding house where the stench from the toilet pits was so bad I retched whenever I went inside. There was singing underneath us all the time and it was too hot to sleep.

Etka spent two days trying to find one of the Jewish relief organizations to sell us a ticket on the Danish ships leaving for England or America. On the second day she came in nearly in tears and threw two pieces of paper down on the bed. She picked up the menorah we had brought all the way from Kishinev and hurled it on the ground, shouting, ‘Thieves and devils! May God sink this place like Sodom the second we get on that forsaken boat!' I guessed she had been forced to pay everything we had for those tickets, by some rogue after a good commission.

That night I dreamed that Etka had talked to me in my sleep. When I woke I saw that her sheets were wet and red. I must have become hysterical because I remember running downstairs and screaming. The woman who owned the boarding house called a doctor and he came quickly. He told us she had dysentery and it was very bad. Even then, I could see he didn't have much love for Jews. He kept calling us ‘you people' when asking questions about Etka and me.

I stayed with Etka for two nights and cleaned out the bucket. On the third day of her illness, Etka woke up from the fever and grabbed my hand so hard that it hurt. She told me to go to the Winter Harbour and take the tickets. I could sell hers, she said, to get some money for the passage to England, and take the boat myself before it sailed. Of course I refused. Not because I was brave at all. It was the opposite. Etka was my shelter. What use was I without her? She twisted my hand, her face red and angry like I'd seen it so many times before. She said, ‘Don't be such a bloody fool, Rivka. It's time to be a mensch. Mama and Papa will never forgive you if you miss this chance. I'll haunt you and you'll never have a moment's peace.'