The Singing Fire (21 page)

The story went that there were two mothers who came to King Solomon the Wise. The women lived in the same house. In fact, they were prostitutes and the house was a common lodging house. They gave birth within three days of each other, but one of the infants died while the mother slept. No one else knew whose baby was whose, and each of the mothers said the living baby belonged to her. King Solomon was asked to judge between them.

For weeks Nehama waited for Mrs. Levy to return. Every knock on the door made her more afraid than she’d ever been.

Berwick Street

A room in Soho might be rented by a woman in a nightgown. It was hardly more peculiar than most of the spectacles that met the sour gaze of landladies there: Frenchmen, prostitutes, and Jews trying to follow their betters to the West End, creating their own little ghetto among the prostitutes that worked the theater district. The shopkeepers’ signs in Berwick Street were in Yiddish, and the market smelled just like the East End, but here Jews bought gallery tickets to the English theater. They felt themselves to be more cultured than the Jews of Petticoat Lane, more worldly even if they were just as poor. Wasn’t it a short walk to see all the nice things in shops that they couldn’t afford? And the water company that served the shops of Regent Street also provided for Berwick Street. A person could actually turn a tap in the yard and have water pour from it. The ghost of the first wife saw it herself.

The organ-grinder cranked out “The Marseillaise” while Emilia waited for her breasts to dry, sitting by the window and watching the
prostitutes go in and out of the pub across the street. Every time she wondered about her child, she pushed the thought from her mind, turning her head from side to side, her breath quickening as she looked out the window for something else to occupy her. With practice, she could stop the thought almost before it arose. Her mother used to say that a woman should put her eyes on the most pleasant thing in her view; this would save her sanity. In Emilia’s room there was a bed, a table, and a wardrobe with a cracked mirror. She didn’t give the mirror a glance, attending instead to the colors outside her window. It was hardly London at all. The French children wore pink and blue hats, their coats as red as the red sky. The organ-grinder’s buttons were gold, multiplying the pale winter light into a dozen suns. The unemployed men marching from the East End to the West to riot carried banners painted in red and black, and on Purim the Jews wore masks and robes of many colors. They performed in the street, half in English and half in Yiddish, with a real woman playing the Jewish queen as she triumphed over the evil minister who ordered the death of the Jews in ancient Persia. Her hair hung down in ripples of night, no kerchief covered it, and religious men called to their sons to come inside, away from the seductions of the red sky and the immodest woman.

When Emilia’s body returned to an approximation of its former shape, she sent a boy to fetch her trunk and bring it to the post office in Soho. There it stayed for a month in case there were inquiries, but the man who was sent to fetch it was told that no one had come to ask any questions. It was the beginning of spring, French wives were setting geraniums in their window boxes, when two men carried the trunk up to Emilia’s room, just past the market in Berwick Street.

In the street there was a parade with violins and trumpets, and the rough women standing outside the Hound and Hare were adding their comments to the general commotion. While the ghost of the first wife watched the parade, Emilia was having a bath, her eyes closed so that she could lie peacefully in the zinc tub and enjoy the hot water, for which she’d paid extra. When finally the water turned cold, there was no choice but to dry herself off and open the trunk. Her fingers were stiff as she put on one of her old dresses, calling out to her landlady to come and help her with the middle buttons.

Emilia faced the cracked mirror, inspecting her feet, her ankles, her hips, waist, shoulders, face. She had a more fashionable shape than before, the shoulders rounder, the chest plumper. It could serve her well and the gown even better, declaring that she didn’t belong to Soho. Her mother used to say that mud can easily swallow a woman and the world not be any different for her absence.

The violinists and trumpeters were playing “God Save the Queen” as they led the procession to the newly dedicated Synagogue of Soho. The ghost of the first Mrs. Rosenberg leaned on the windowsill, watching the fog come off the trumpets and the sky come down to bless the men in their prayer shawls. The men danced with the Torah scroll and the women with its shadow. The men were singing wedding songs, for it is written that the Holy One is the bridegroom and Israel his bride. The women were silent as they were among men whose piety forbade them to hear the siren tones of a woman’s singing voice.

Under the wedding canopy, everything is beautiful. Only later does the bride ask why her husband doesn’t speak to her and why he comes to her too late.

Here and there a Jewish boy broke out of the parade to make eyes at the prostitutes standing in the doorway of the Hound and Hare.

Frying Pan Alley

Naturally a ghost gets to talking with other ghosts. So I tell her, Mrs. Rosenberg, you want to know why I came? For my grandchildren. And is London so different from where I was? Every day I thank God for the fog. It’s very
heimish,
damp and dark just like the grave I left at home. But now that summer is here, it’s too hot. Believe me, it’s a fire, and not a false alarm like what happened in the Prince’s Street theater. Just yesterday every presser was a playwright and every seamstress an actress. Today they’re afraid to be in a crowd. The theater is closed. Do they think panic is a plague like cholera? Between you and me, maybe they’re right
.

Now there’s been another tragedy. Not, God forbid, with my Nehameleh, but she can’t sleep and at night she thinks of all the tragedies in the world. This is what comes when you have no place to cry. I’m telling you it’s an illness. She gives the baby her breast to suck, praying that her milk will come and this will show that she’s in God’s favor. The nipple cracks, she bites her lip. It’s not important, I tell her. Minnie has enough milk. But I’m talking to a wall. To a brick in the road. To the wind. When you’re dead, who listens? Tell me. Be honest with me. Isn’t that just the same as being alive and talking to your children?

In Nehama’s back room gas jets flickered, adding heat to the evening light that came through the window. “I don’t believe that Lipski did it,” she said, giving the cradle a push with her foot. Nathan had found it in the Lane and bought it with his card money. “I’m telling you, the boy is innocent.”

“They caught him right there,” Minnie said, wiping her forehead. Everyone was talking about it. The girl’s name was Miriam Angel, like something from a play in the old Jewish theater. But she was murdered in a small East End room; it could have been any of theirs; the perpetrator was said to be Israel Lipski, her lodger. “He had the same poison on his lips as the girl.”

“So you think the murderer poisons himself, too? Lipski was beaten up and pushed under the bed, just like he said.” Nehama started up her sewing machine again. She was tired, and the baby was whimpering with the heat. The hot coals in Lazar’s iron were just a thicker form of the air they were trying to breathe.

“No one should have lodgers. It isn’t safe.” There was nowhere to escape the heat of their small rooms. The theater had gone bankrupt, and even in the market every cabbage had a sickening smell, the juggler dropped his plates, the strong man was fat and broke a bench when he sat down to rest. The singing dwarf only cried bitter tears, and nobody cried with him.

“You want to be afraid? I’ll tell you why,” Nehama said. “Because a Jewish boy was found under the bed, he’s going to be hanged. Any one of us could be him. Look at Nathan.”

“I’m all right,” he said. “Just put in that lining and don’t talk so much.” He had a bruise on his face. When he was walking home, a gentile called him Lipski and they got into a fight. Nathan’s hand was cut, too.

“It’s because there’s no theater,” Minnie said.

“What are you talking?” Nehama asked.

“If there was a theater then someone would be there the night of
the murder,” Minnie said. “Maybe the girl, maybe the lodger, or even the murderer. You think murderers don’t like a good melodrama? There’s nothing to do on a Saturday night.”

“Or any other night,” Nehama said irritably. The cradle was under the table, by her right foot. She sewed and she rocked the baby, who was named Gittel-Sarah. Everything had worked out; she had a husband, she had a child, she had a means to earn a living. So why couldn’t she sleep at night?

Regent Street

Something as small as a gold cross on a chain could make all the difference in employment opportunities for a young woman.

Chesham House of Liberty’s was a shop of many rooms and staircases and mirrors draped with artistic fabrics to give the impression of corridors where there were none. It had Oriental porcelain, bronzes, lacquerware, dolls, fans, handscreens, armor, inlaid cabinets, ivory, swords, Indian condiments, Arab sideboards, guava jelly, damask wallpaper, and in one small nook there was the Estate Agency department, managed by a rather large man. The two sections of Chesham House were separated by a shop that wouldn’t sell to Mr. Liberty. A humped staircase over the store connected them, and a wire attached to a receiving box facilitated communication between the two sections. The Savoy Theatre purchased the costumes for
The Mikado
from Liberty’s, and each was genuinely, authentically Japanese. You may depend upon it.

Emilia was sure that it was Miss Moffit’s hair that made her the senior shopgirl in the basement. Her red hair worn loose in the Aesthetic style, her protruding upper lip, and that squint under her square eyebrows were all the rage. In her medieval shift, she could have stepped straight out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. Miss Moffit was in charge of Curios, separated from the Eastern Bazaar by an archway.

Emilia sat on a stool, reading at the counter. It was a rainy day in September, and the wind rattled the basement window. The electric lights dimmed and brightened and dimmed to near darkness. Emilia glanced suspiciously at the ghost of the first wife, sitting on an unpacked case of clay horses from China.

“I’ll light the candles,” she called to Miss Moffit, putting her book
down on an ornamental stand as two gentlemen came in, shaking out their umbrellas and leaving them in the corner. The taller of the gentlemen, an artist, had been in the shop before. The customers were always playwrights or painters or composers of operettas. Miss Moffit led him to her department and directed the other to Emilia.

“I believe that Mr. Zalkind would be best assisted by you, Miss Rosenberg,” she said. That was Miss Moffit all over, choosing the better-looking gentleman for herself, leaving Emilia with the one that wore spectacles and his hair long.

The ghost of the first wife rose from her seat on the crate of clay horses and joined Emilia at the counter. “How may I help you?” Emilia asked.

“I wish to buy a present for my mother,” he said. The ghost of the first Mrs. Rosenberg leaned her elbows on the counter beside the tall candle. She looked more solid in the candlelight, smiling fondly at the gentleman.

“Certainly,” Emilia said with as much indifference as she could muster. “And what is the occasion?”

“Nothing in particular.” He put a book on the counter. There were ink stains on his fingers. Emilia did not care for men that smelled of ink. She’d had enough of that in Minsk.

“What about a vase? We just had a new shipment.”

“My mother has too many. I’d like to surprise her.” He looked at Emilia with just a hint of appreciation. She deserved more, but after all, she was only a shopgirl.

In the Curios department Miss Moffit was showing her tall gentleman a bamboo writing desk. “What sort of thing does your mother fancy?” Emilia asked.

“A more pleasant son, I daresay. We had a disagreement.” He paused, waiting for her to ask him about what, but a shopgirl doesn’t have to pander to her betters’ desire for her interest.

Emilia took a feather duster and busied herself with running it over the glass-fronted cabinets.

“My mother sees everything, even from the ladies’ gallery in the synagogue, and she saw me go out rather earlier than I should.” He looked at Emilia with the blank face of someone guarding himself. “I promised I’d go back.”

“Will you?” she asked despite herself.

“I’d rather bring her a present later. What do you advise, Miss …?”

“Miss Rosenberg. How about a fan?” She reached for an eighteenth-century fan, but the ghost of the first wife knocked another down. Emilia picked it up, turning the fan over and shrugging before she placed it on the counter. “This one would be most suitable,” she said.

The silk fan was printed with a photograph of three solemn geisha girls. One had her hands over her ears, the second over her eyes, the third her mouth. Mr. Zalkind laughed. It was a pleasant laugh, and his face relaxed into an open smile.

“Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil,” he said. “Well chosen.” He thumbed the pages of the book on the marble counter. It was a Hebrew prayer book for the High Holy Days. The book was so old, it absorbed all the light from the candle flame.

“A person should not be dominated by ghosts,” Emilia said, returning the gaze of the first Mrs. Rosenberg, who saw so very clearly in the darkness.

“How true.” Mr. Zalkind leaned over the counter. “Perhaps you’ve read my column in
The Pall Mall Gazette
or my book?
The Longbow Mystery.”

“No, I’m sorry. I prefer
The Times.”
The ghost threw up her hands. Well, what did she expect? Emilia was someone else now. A shopgirl. Did the first wife think that Emilia was so stupid as to have learned nothing from her trials? “Shall I wrap the fan for you?” she asked.