The Singing Fire (35 page)

“I’ve an appointment with him after Sukkoth,” Emilia said, but she couldn’t make herself smile. It was a frightening thing, the obstinacy of her mouth, as if she wasn’t the
gitteh yokhelta
at all. Just because there was a burning in her chest and she was thinking that it was too early in her pregnancy to have heartburn, something she shouldn’t know at all. Not when to expect the itchy nipples, the kicking, the pressing of a crown. “Why this sudden preoccupation with your history?” she asked. “You used to say it wasn’t worth remembering.”

“Now I think it is.”

“Well, it’s old. The Jewish question is old and tired.” In the fin de siècle there was nothing worse than something old.

“Honesty is a great virtue, Emilia. I appreciate it.” He returned to his desk. There he stood, bending a little under the slanted ceiling as he picked up his notebook and shoved it into a folder with the photographs. “I’ll work at the
Gazette
office. You might think about calling in your dressmaker. That dress is too tight,” he said. “You’re getting fat.” His steps were quick on the stairs, the same haste she used to hear on the steps of the shop in Regent Street.

Samson had a penchant for gentile girls. His parents asked him, Can’t you find a girl among your own people that you have to go and take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines? He said, I like the Philistine girl. Get her for me. This wasn’t Delilah but his first wife. Her father’s wedding guests threatened to set fire to her and her father’s household if she didn’t help them win a bet that Samson had put them up to. Later the Philistines set fire to her anyway after Samson, being angry about something, destroyed their grain, vineyards, and olive trees. Maybe when Delilah was offered a bribe to find out the secret of Samson’s strength, she remembered the fate of the first wife and took matters into her own hands.

Frying Pan Alley

“Get my medicine,” Nathan called out. He was lying on his back, eyes closed.

“You can’t have it,” Nehama said as she showed Berman’s boy where to pile the pieces of cut cloth in the back room. He held out his hand for a penny and she gave it to him, or else the next order might be accidentally dropped in the mud. Then she took a dark bottle from the
dresser and poured the contents out the window. If a man doesn’t look at what his wife is doing, why should he have a choice in the matter?

“I want it now, Nehama. My hand is killing me.”

“There isn’t any. I just spilled it into the gutter.”

She took Nathan’s shirt off the hook and sat on a stool next to the table, attacking the stitches on the sewed-up sleeve. If she couldn’t undo the accident, then at least she could rip out stitches and sew something else.

“Are you crazy? I need my medicine.” The sun was struggling through the dusty window, making faint shadows on the wall.

“The doctor said you had all that’s good for you. Get out of bed.”

Nathan rolled over to face her. “I’m not well. I need sleep.”

“You’ve had enough sleep to last the rest of your life. What about the newspaper? God alone knows how many horses have won since you looked at a racing page.”

“What do I care?”

“I’m fixing your shirt. Next I’ll do the jacket. It was a mistake sewing up the sleeve. You have an arm if not a hand there.” She threw the shirt on the bed. “And with your legs, there’s nothing wrong. Don’t wave your stump at me. There’s more stumps in the next world than I know what to do with already. Them as is Rothschilds may lie in bed. Get your bleeding arse up. The boy brought an order from Berman.”

“I don’t want slop here.” He glanced back at the workshop, but from where he lay on the bed he couldn’t see anything.

“So what about me? Rent has to be paid and I want your help.”

“What are you talking—can I do something now?”

“You can read to me, Nathan.” Her breath came quickly; this was a man she didn’t know, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, but he was sitting up, and in his eyes she saw something of the old Nathan that she’d missed like her own heart.

“A book doesn’t pay rent,” he said.

“You read and I’ll forget that I’m making slop for half what everyone else gets.”

“You shouldn’t speak to Berman. You know what he’s like.” He put the shirt on over his long underwear with the hole near the collarbone, leaving it open because he couldn’t manage the buttons with one hand and she wasn’t moving an inch to help.

“Next time you talk to him, then,” Nehama said. “Come on.”

He followed her into the back room, his voice angry. “Well, maybe I should.”

“Maybes I don’t want to hear. Do it or don’t bang me on the head with complaints.” She put the library book on the worktable in front of him.
Our Mutual Friend
.

“I don’t read English so good,” he said.

“Good enough for me.” Before she put her foot to the treadle of the sewing machine, she stood for a minute next to the table, looking at Nathan. “It’s too hot,” she said, hiking up her skirt and rolling down her stockings ever so slowly. She did it to wake him up, though only God in heaven knew what kind of husband she had now. It was ridiculous, a middle-aged woman doing this, but she couldn’t stop, her hands belonged to someone else, pushing down her stockings just so, for the good inclination is a harsher master than the wiliest
yetzer-hara
, and Nathan’s gaze was alert.

“My old scar is fading,” she said matter-of-factly, sitting beside him on the bench, her bare foot on the treadle of the sewing machine.

“I can still see it,” he said, and whether it was the old Nathan that was speaking or the new Nathan, she wasn’t sure.

“Start here.” She pointed to the page where she’d left off on
Shobbos
, and he began reading in a halting voice.

“Has a dead man any use for money? Is it possible for a dead man to have money? What world does a dead man belong to? T’other world. What world does money belong to? This world.” Nathan looked at her uncertainly.

“Go on,” she said. Later she would hire Lazar for pressing and Minnie to do the plain sewing, but now there were just the two of them, herself and Nathan, her back to the pressing table, her eyes on her husband’s as dark as charcoal. “Don’t stop.”

CHAPTER 7

Master of All

1899

Charlotte Street

A person might wish to live in Bloomsbury, Mrs. Zalkind said at every opportunity, though why someone might is a mystery one must accept, as God offers many mysteries in life and an ordinary person cannot comprehend them. Nonetheless, if a person wishes to live in Bloomsbury, then there are many good streets. She had made a list of them and inspected the houses. In fact, following her advice, Mr. Abraham, the renowned Jewish artist, had moved his family next to the house of a famous dead poetess. Well, not exactly beside it, for the street of the poetess had decayed as had all the streets where the literary luminaries of twenty-five years ago lived; one must keep abreast of change, and the Abrahams, on Mrs. Zalkind’s advice, had found a house in the square next to the dead poetess. But Mrs. Zalkind’s own children were deaf to her.

A woman in her fifties ought to be
shepping naches
, reaping pride from her descendants. But Mrs. Zalkind couldn’t hold her head up in the ladies’ gallery of the synagogue. Not when her firstborn son lived in a pink street! As secretary of the Society for the Protection of Hebrew Girls, she had a duty to study the color code of Booth’s London Street Map. One must trouble oneself with the unfortunate, and there were many gradations of poverty: the dark blue streets of the starving poor, the light blue of the merely hungry poor, the pink of bricklayers and carpenters, even
to the red of struggling shopkeepers, but there was only one color for the better classes. Yellow. One must live in a yellow street. Mrs. Zalkind’s only consolation had been her son’s proximity to the playwright Mr. Shaw, but he had left his home in Fitzroy Square last year.

Jacob’s family came for dinner during Sukkoth, the festival of the autumn harvest. All over the East End, small huts were made of boards and roofed with green branches, open to the sky in memory of the dwellings that the Israelites put up and took down in their wanderings through the desert. The
sukkah
was decorated with fruit, paper chains, leaves, lanterns, and chestnuts, and there the Jews of the East End ate cake and drank schnapps. Weren’t they commanded to rejoice? Each night they invited their ancestors into the
sukkah
, newcomers like themselves. Abraham. Joseph. Moses.

Special prayers were recited in the synagogue, and on the seventh day, Hoshana Rabbah, the grandmothers came. Living women were not permitted to stand among the men, but the dead came to add their prayers. A person’s fate, sealed on the Day of Atonement, was yet subject to one last appeal on this day. Seven times the men circled the synagogue, shaking the branches and the fragrant
esrog
, the fruit of the tree of splendor. Save us, save us. They beat the ground with willows and when three stars were visible in the sky, the grandmothers looked up to the Court of Heaven. What was written was then sealed and the books closed.

On Hoshana Rabbah, while the heavens were still open, Jacob’s family came for dinner. Zaydeh wore his holiday clothes, a satin caftan and fur hat, like a figure of ancient days, mortifying his English daughter and son-in-law. Holidays exist, however, so that mortification, insult, and loneliness may have their moment, and the house in Charlotte Street was ready with wine, meat, and cake.

“Come in, Zaydeh,” Emilia said, ever the good
yokhelta
. He held a
lulav
and
esrog
.

“Would you take it to the kitchen?” he asked Emilia. “A
lulav
shouldn’t dry out, God forbid. The steam from cooking will keep the branches moist.” Emilia motioned to the maid, who took it from Zaydeh.

They were all standing about the parlor, furnished with everything that would be most fashionable in a year or so, the long and lean lamps
casting deep shadows, the leaded window painted with oak leaves, a collection of cloudy glass bubbled and streaked as if it came from ancient Rome, the wallpaper with its overgrown thistles, the posters for this season at the Royal Adelphi, which happened to be a season of dramas like
The Drink
and
Two Little Vagabonds
.

It was fashionable, and that was all. But the autumnal light and the painting of the empty road overtook Mr. Zalkind, who hugged his son like a Jew on the holiday of rejoicing, forgetting that an Englishman ought to shake a hand or offer a cigarette. He quickly retired to the fireplace—there was still a fireplace and most fortunately a mantelpiece to lean one’s elbow on—and he fumbled for his pipe. There he could stand back as usual, thinking of his business and the Board of Guardians and the sad people he saw every Sunday. He wore a lounge coat with slits in the side seams; it was the latest style. His mustache was not gray but silver.

Albert’s young wife was a Spanish Jew, her family distinguished. “My dear sister,” she said, taking Emilia’s hands in hers. Judith was dressed modestly. Of course, if you knew clothes, you would immediately see that the gown was, in fact, very dear. “Your poor nails. I don’t care what anyone says, a woman in a certain condition has nerves and ought to take care of them. Are you feeling quite well, Emilia?”

“Just a little tired. If you’ll excuse me, I might check on dinner.” But there was no escaping to the kitchen, for Mrs. Zalkind was taking her arm.

“It’s most confusing,” she said to Emilia, walking with her to the dining room. “Everyone knows how showy the Spanish Jews are,” she whispered, “but look at that gown of Judith’s. It is absolutely plain. I hope that you are not insulted, my dear. She ought to have worn something a little nicer. I don’t entirely trust her. A person ought to be what she is; then one knows what to think of her. It’s most disturbing, though naturally I shall love her as a daughter. Something smells appetizing. Did you try that new recipe for brisket?” Mrs. Zalkind sailed into the dining room; Emilia followed like a dinghy behind a battleship. “Ah, you have one of those Art Nouveau things with the droopy flowers. I don’t feel it necessary to be current with every small decoration myself, but everyone to his own. After you are converted, Emilia, you will be even more my daughter. Though it’s such an awful word.
One converts rubles to pounds. I prefer guineas. The better shops price everything in guineas.”

“Please, Mother. You’re to sit there beside Jacob,” Emilia said, pointing to the place card and seating herself on Jacob’s other side. She took a deep breath and resumed smiling. The maid was serving soup.

“Have you thought of a name for the baby?” Albert asked.

“A good British name. Not something from the
heim,”
Mrs. Zalkind said. The table had been expanded with two leaves to accommodate Jacob’s family. Even the linen had been monogrammed by Mrs. Zalkind. Emilia was hemmed in by the last letter of the alphabet.
Z, Z
, everywhere
Z
, as if the world snored.

“If I had a son, I’d name him after Albert,” Judith said. Emilia had placed her behind the centerpiece, an iridescent blue vase filled with flowers. Judith stretched her neck to peer over them. “That’s the tradition among Spanish Jews.”

“God forbid. And bring down the evil eye?” Mrs. Zalkind asked.

“You have to think of the sound of a name.” Jacob tapped the table with his spoon. “Jacob—one, two. There’s a hesitation in it. A strong name has one syllable. John. James. Paul.” He tapped the table: one; one; one.

Only Zaydeh didn’t have an opinion. At his end of the table, he was saying the blessing over the bread he’d taken from the silver basket. On the wall behind his head were framed photographs of Zalkinds and their relatives.

“You must have another servant,” Mrs. Zalkind said. “Beating carpets in your condition, it’s outrageous. Don’t think I haven’t been talking to Annie. I know everything. Now listen to me. The orphanage in Norwood has excellent girls, trained for domestic service.”