Solomon's Song (20 page)

Simply stating that she was a gentile and then presenting Elizabeth’s credentials to his father he waited, expecting the worst, but for once in his life he was prepared to stand up to him. To his astonishment, David Solomon had approved of the match after asking a single question, ‘Is she a Roman Catholic?’

When told she wasn’t, but Church of England he’d seemed unusually enthusiastic. ‘Splendid, m’boy, a bit of goy blood can do us no harm whatsoever.’ In what was a rare show of affection he’d clapped his son on the back and asked, ‘Has she got big tits?’

Not answering, but nevertheless encouraged by his father’s approval, the following day Abraham brought his intended home. Leaving Elizabeth to wait in the conservatory he’d entered his mother’s bed chamber.

To Abraham’s surprise David was seated beside his wife’s bed when he entered. This came as somewhat of a shock to him as David’s habit was to spend no more than a few moments at her bedside after he’d taken breakfast and when he returned at the end of the day from his office in Bourke Street. Rebecca referred to these visits as ‘Papa’s passion! A peck in the air, a burp, a fart and always the same greeting, “Ow yer going? Orright? Good! Eat something. Too-ra-loo!”‘ He would have entered the bed chamber, reached her bed, pecked the air above her head, turned around, spoken, farted, burped and been back out the door before she’d managed a single word in reply.

It was unusual therefore to see David at his wife’s bedside in the middle of the afternoon. Abraham had expected to speak to his mother alone and, with the presence of his father, who he assumed must have unexpectedly and untypically come to lend his support, his feelings were mixed. The previous day in David’s office he had not talked of loving Elizabeth, nor even of feeling an affection for her, but merely that he had met a girl he liked, a Christian who came from a decent family and he hoped to gain David’s blessing to marry her. ‘Love’ was not a word he knew to use in front of his father, but it was his only hope of success when talking with his mother. Abraham had carefully practised the words he would say to her, but now with his father present, he was afraid they might sound mawkish and pathetic whereupon David wouldn’t hesitate to mock him and to make a fool of him in front of his mother. Nevertheless, not one for extemporaneous invention, Abraham decided to plunge ahead with his original plea for her blessing.

‘Mama, I have brought someone home to meet you,’ he announced shyly, then clearing his throat added, ‘Someone I love with all my heart and who it is my dearest wish to marry. Will you give me your blessing, for I cannot do without it, or her in my life?’

Rebecca clapped her hands, delighted at her son’s news. ‘Oh, Abie, what wonderful news!’ She turned to David. ‘To think, all the nice girls I’ve found for him, the boy chick finds one for himself! Her name, if you please?’

‘Elizabeth, Mama.’

‘Elizabeth?’ Rebecca frowned, thinking a moment. ‘I don’t know an Elizabeth? Not from the reform synagogue, I hope?’ She looked immediately suspicious. ‘Her surname, if you please?’

Abraham brought his fist to his lips and coughed, ‘Fitzsimmons. Mama, she’s ah … not Jewish.’

Rebecca promptly refused to meet the plain-looking Elizabeth, declaring later that she would rather die than see her only son marry a gentile. She turned and cried loudly to David, ‘My son, he wants me to die! I have no time left, but he wants I should die tonight!’

‘No, Mama, that is not so,’ Abraham cried. ‘Give me a chance to introduce her to you, I know you’ll change your mind!’

‘Not enough boobs to feed a hungry mouse!’ Rebecca declared out of the blue, again directing this remark to David. It was true enough, Elizabeth possessed a very small bust, but as his mother was bedridden and had never laid eyes on her, nor David for that matter, Abraham could not imagine how she could have known this.

His mother was a determined woman but she usually submitted to his father’s will. He now turned to David for his help. ‘Father, I thought…?’

‘Stop!’ David shouted. ‘Not another word! Get rid of the shiksa, you hear! We work with gentiles, we do business with gentiles but we don’t marry them! Get rid of the goy!’ He looked sternly at his son. ‘You hear me, Abraham?’ David pointed to the door. ‘Out she goes!’ Then he added, ‘Wait for me in my study after you’ve sent her home.’ Abraham, deeply distressed, hesitated. ‘G’arn… be off! Oh, and give her a ten pound note for her father, tell him to buy a revolver and use it on himself, he ain’t worth a pinch of shit, the stuck up bastard!’

‘Thank you, David,’ Rebecca cried, taking her husband’s hands in both her own and clutching them fondly to her breast. ‘I am not long for this world, you must find a nice Jewish girl for Abie before I die, the boy knows from women nothing!’

Abraham, distressed by his mother’s stubborn refusal, became even more confused when, upon his return from seeing the tearful Elizabeth to her home, having attempted to comfort her and to assure her that he intended to fight for her, he marched into David’s study to have it out with his father once and for all. ‘Father, I cannot accept your rejection of Elizabeth,’ he cried immediately upon entering.

But before he could continue David held up his hand. ‘Sssh! Not so fast, my boy. Not so fast. Close the door. Rejection? What rejection? You have my blessing to marry the girl one hundred per cent.’

Abraham wasn’t sure he’d heard his father correctly. ‘What? But in Mama’s bedroom you…?’

David nodded. ‘She’s dying, have you no compassion for a dying woman?’

‘But why, Father?’

‘Your sons will be gentile,’ David replied simply. ‘It is time we stopped being Jews.’

‘Stopped?’ Abraham was deeply shocked. ‘But we are Jews!’

‘You are, I am, your mother is, but your children won’t be.’

‘But Elizabeth could turn, she’s agreed to convert. We have already discussed it.’

David looked unblinkingly at Abraham until his son could no longer meet his father’s eye. ‘She could, but she won’t.’

‘But Mama? You said yourself, it will break her heart?’

‘That’s why I wanted to see you, your mother will be dead soon enough.’ David shrugged. ‘So what’s so hard? You’ll stay stum until after the funeral.’ He gave a philosophical shrug. ‘It’s not such a long time, just don’t shtoop her, you hear? I want your children to be born within wedlock, everything kosher.’

Rebecca died three months later of consumption, much as the family physician had predicted she would. Abraham married Elizabeth and, for the first time in his life, he was truly happy.

When after a year there was no sign of offspring, David started to put on the pressure, demanding that the couple get on with it. When after four years there was still no offspring, David had had enough and he decided Elizabeth was to blame, his son had married a barren woman.

‘She must go! Make a settlement, not too much, she has eaten our bread too long for too little!’

But, for the first time in his life, Abraham dug his heels in and stood up to his father and refused. ‘Father, Elizabeth is my wife and I love her. If we are not to have children then that’s God’s will.’

‘God’s will! God’s will! Can’t you see the shiksa is too bloody in-bred, she’s all dried up inside, look at her tits fer Chrissake!’ David, accustomed to having his own way, continued to rant and rave, threatening to throw his son out of the business without a penny if he didn’t divorce Elizabeth.

Abraham stayed calm throughout the tirade. ‘Father, it’s no use, you may do as you wish to me. Elizabeth is my wife and I love her.’

In the end David had no further recourse. There were no substitute heirs in the immediate Solomon family. Ann, his sister, was a spinster and gone over to the other side, Sarah had married and had two children, girls and both quite dotty, not suitable as heirs and unlikely to find husbands, Mark had gone bush on the mainland and was said to have taken an Aboriginal wife.

Abraham remained David’s only hope for a grandchild with the unbanished Elizabeth the obstacle.

David, who himself had married late in life, refused to believe that it might be his own son firing blanks. He knew that eventually he would find a way to get rid of Elizabeth. Equally, he was aware that he was already in his sixties and running out of time. His lack of an heir other than Abraham began to preoccupy him to the extent where he grew morbid and introspective.

As often enough happens with men who suddenly become conscious of the fact that their allotted time in this mortal coil is coming to an end, David began to dwell on things spiritual.

In a man as iconoclastic and venal as David Solomon this was a curious notion in itself, but his spirituality took an even more bizarre twist. His son’s declaring that their lack of offspring was God’s will began to obsess him. Soon he started to believe that maybe it was God’s will, that he was being punished by a Jewish God for allowing Abraham to marry a gentile.

Though he was wise in the ways of the business world, he was essentially an uneducated and, at heart, superstitious and ignorant man. Reluctantly admitting to himself that his miserable son and his gentile wife had, for the time being, beaten him, David visited Rabbi Dr Abrahams, the rabbi of the Melbourne synagogue.

Since the death of his wife, Rebecca, and the marriage of Abraham to Elizabeth Fitzsimmons, the Melbourne Jewish community had seen very little of the Solomon family, a problem of some significance as it represented a regular source of funds which had now dried up.

And although Abraham’s marriage to Elizabeth Fitzsimmons had created a great deal of delicious gossip amongst the synagogue congregation and was seen as a betrayal of the faith, Rabbi Abrahams, essentially a pragmatic man, was sufficiently worldly to know that religion of any kind cannot exist solely on the piety and pennies of the poor and so he welcomed David warmly.

‘A great pleasure to see you again, Mr Solomon. Since your beloved wife’s tragic demise we have not enjoyed your attendance at synagogue.’

‘Too busy,’ David replied brusquely, and then lost no time in getting to the purpose of his visit. ‘Rabbi, my son Abraham has been married four years and . . .’ He paused and shrugged his shoulders, ‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing? No children, eh?’ The rabbi stroked his beard. ‘A shame, it is written, every Jew is entitled to a son.’

David nodded. ‘Yeah, well we ain’t got one!’ he’d snapped, then came straight out with it, ‘What would it take for my daughter-in-law to become pregnant?’

Rabbi Abrahams looked surprised. Witchcraft and superstition usually belonged to the poorer end of his congregation. He pursed his lips and spread his hands wide. ‘As far as I know, the same as always, a boy and a girl and a feather bed, the rest is God’s will.’

David was not in a mood to share the rabbi’s homely wit. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said impatiently, ‘that’s what I mean, God’s will. Can you get God to change His mind? Can you pray for a grandson? A pregnancy and a grandson?’

The rabbi shrugged. ‘The one is impossible without the other.’ He thought for a moment. ‘You want me to pray? To ask God your daughter-in-law should be pregnant?’ He stroked his beard. ‘Hmm… certainly, it’s possible to ask Him.’ The rabbi could not quite bring himself to believe a man as rich and cynical as David Solomon was so naive in spiritual matters as to expect him to be able to bring his personal influence to bear on the Almighty.

On the other hand, Rabbi Abrahams knew an opportunity when he saw one, though he was not quite sure how far he could go with David Solomon. Certainly the rich old man was a gift from a merciful God, that much he knew for sure. And, furthermore, one which didn’t come along every day. And so he decided to hedge a little.

‘Mind you in this matter, when the girl party is a gentile, there could be er… complications.’

David Solomon was delighted. Complications he knew about, whenever money was about to be discussed the word ‘complications’ occurred frequently.

‘Complications, what complications?’

‘You see, it is a matter of ears,’ Rabbi Abrahams said, thinking on his feet.

‘Ears?’

‘Will God listen with His Jewish ear or His gentile ear, that is the question?’

‘Both!’ David exclaimed. ‘How much?’

‘Both?’ The rabbi looked doubtful. ‘I must remind you I am a rabbi, Mr Solomon, a Jew. While I have the utmost respect for the gentile ear of God, I am only familiar with the Jewish.’ He shrugged. ‘Alas, I am permitted to pray only to one ear.’

‘One ear?’ David thought for a moment. ‘How much for one ear?’

Rabbi Abrahams smiled and spread his hands wide. ‘We pray always that God will provide a little Jewish school we hope to attach to the synagogue. A little place of scholarship for our children. Maybe even your grandson?’ he suggested slyly.

‘Send me the plans, get me a quote.’ David jabbed his forefinger at the rabbi. ‘Though I warn you, I will obtain another myself, we don’t want another incident like your predecessor, that villain,’ David paused, ‘whatsaname?’

‘Rabbi Dattner Jacobson,’ Dr Abrahams sighed, referring to the rabbi before him who had been publicly accused of lining his own pockets.

‘Yes, that crook, we’ll have none of that, there’ll be receipts needed and shown, down to the last copper nail.’

The rabbi bowed his head slightly. ‘But of course, everything must be kosher.’

‘So? What about the other ear?’ David now demanded.

‘The other ear?’

‘Yes, the gentile ear? I must have both ears!’ David announced. ‘I can’t take no chances.’

The rabbi rubbed his bearded chin once more. ‘For a small commission, say ten per cent, for books you understand, in the school, I could talk to the bishop. We could maybe make a little arrangement?’

Arrangements, like complications, were the things David knew most about. ‘The bishop?’ David shook his head. ‘I’ll not do business with the Papists, with them damned Catholics,’ David said emphatically.

‘Not so fast, not so fast, my friend,’ Rabbi Abrahams said soothingly. ‘My friend the Anglican Bishop of Melbourne, James Moorhouse, I could have maybe a little talk to him?’

‘And he’s got the best gentile ear? Better than, you know, that other lot?’ David asked suspiciously.