The Invisible Wall Page 8

  “One, two, three!”

  As he counted, his right arm moved back and forth like the piston of a locomotive, his right knee was cocked upward, and at the last word he let go with a series of loud farts that made us double up with laughter.

  There was still another delay as we came onto Chestergate Avenue. The mill itself was dark and silent, but from the grating in its sidewalk came a muted roaring sound accompanied by flashes of light. We could never resist going across to look down. We were gazing at the boiler room of the mill, and the furnace that was kept going all night. A big, brawny man naked to the waist, face blackened, was shoveling coal. He paused to look up at us and grin, the flames dancing behind him. He waved, and his lips moved, but we could not hear the words. We waved back, and stood watching fascinated until someone remembered that it was time to go.

  At last, we came trooping into the cheder, guilty, blinking in the strong light. The rabbi stood waiting for us, warming his back against the fireplace, angry and impatient, the long cigarette holder in his hand with the cigarette almost burned down to the end.

  “So here you are, finally,” he burst out. “Where have you been? Playing a little footer, perhaps? Smashing peoples’ windows? Well, let’s see how much Hebrew you know. Sit down.” He added contemptuously, “Scholars!”

  We scrambled for our seats, glad this was all the reprimand we got. The benches were arranged in rows before the fireplace. This room might well have once been the fancy drawing room my sister Rose always dreamed about. It was a large room, airy and light during the day, with a high ceiling and a wide, ornate molding around the borders. Bow windows looked out onto what had once been a garden, with wooden seats in front of them. The marble fireplace took up almost one entire wall, and had a large mantelpiece. The floors, now dark and stained and worn, were probably the original oak floors.

  It was redolent of an elegance that belonged to the Victorian era, and the aristocracy about which Rose always fantasized. It had given way to the musty smell of siddurim, and was filled these nights with the voices of a dozen or so young Jewish boys chanting Hebrew words, and the bellowing voice of a rabbi trying to drum knowledge of an ancient past into their heads.

  Our lesson lasted about an hour, and during that time the poor rabbi must have aged far beyond his forty or so years. We tormented him endlessly, with the strange noises that Sam Roseman made, sending us into fits of suppressed laughter, with the spitballs that he and his friends threw at one another, but mostly with the mistakes that we made in our Hebrew. The rabbi moved among the benches with the cigarette holder in his hand and the cigarette smoldering, raging, shouting, pointing with a yellow tobacco-stained finger at some spot in the siddur, and sometimes boxing an ear when his rage became uncontrollable.

  It must have been a tremendous relief to him when the hour of instruction was over. “Go home,” he’d say, his voice hoarse from shouting. “Go to your mothers and tell them I have done all I can, but I do not know how to perform miracles. Tell them only God can do that.”

  I recall that as we rushed out he wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, and muttered slightly to himself. He had other troubles besides us. He had a son who was refusing to go to the synagogue.

  SOONER OR LATER that winter we all came down with a cold, sometimes two or three together, so that there was a constant sneezing and blowing of noses, and my mother was forever busy tearing up old bedsheets and turning them into handkerchiefs, or snot rags, as we called them.

  My turn came, and mine was a bad one, with a burning fever that kept me in bed, and then, best of all, home from school for another few days after I got out of bed. I was not sorry. By this time I shared my brothers’ fear and hatred of St. Peter’s. I was glad to be home, and it was like the old days that I remembered so fondly, being with my mother all day, sitting on the floor near her playing with my few broken toys.

  She was always busy and bustling about, especially now that she had her shop, and her long skirt with the apron over it would rustle as she hurried to answer a knock on the door that meant a customer.

  I usually followed her around and sometimes went to the door with her when a knock came. I had learned by now that most of her customers came in during the early part of the afternoon, but less to buy than to sit and gossip. It had become a sort of clubroom for them, and some of them would buy a glass of the sour milk that my mother had begun to make and sell, and they would sip as they talked, and in this fashion they would while away a pleasant afternoon.

  I think my mother loved these afternoons, and looked forward to them. It was an escape from some of the unhappiness of her life. Watching her, as I always did, finding a corner for myself when the women began to come in, and seeing the flush on her cheeks as she sat behind the counter with all her customers around her, some sipping at their sour milk, and the room buzzing with talk, I sensed that she was in her element. She had found something in the shop that was perhaps even more important to her than the little money she made out of it.

  There she sat behind that counter, like a queen on her throne, with all her ladies-in-waiting gathered about her. She also made sour cream and potted cheese, and sold them as well as the faded fruits and vegetables. She’d had shelves built along the walls, and if it had not been for the Levines, she would have turned it into a Jewish grocery. But she would never have done that to the Levines, to whom she would always be grateful. Nevertheless, she had accomplished a great deal, and these afternoons were perhaps her biggest reward, the high spot of her day, in a rather sad life.

  This particular day was bleak and cloudy. A sharp wind was blowing, and the women came in one by one huddled in their shawls and shivering. To their relief, my mother had built a fire in the shop. She didn’t always do this, coal cost too much, but today was exceptionally cold, so she had splurged a little with her meager supply of coal, and the glow of the fire in the dimness of the room added to the coziness of the gathering.

  I watched from my corner, hidden by a sack of potatoes on one side, and a sack of onions on the other. Fanny Cohen, my mother’s closest friend and the first to arrive, was sitting on an upturned orange crate near the counter, a thin, bedraggled woman with hair hanging over her eyes, rocking her baby back and forth to keep it from crying and interfering with the talk going on.

  They were jabbering away in a strange mixture of English, with a Lancashire accent, and Yiddish, with an occasional Russian or Polish word thrown in. I scarcely listened. The topics did not interest me. Because this was Thursday, the day Mrs. Zarembar went into the country for her chickens, there was much speculation as to the kind of chickens she would bring; then it was the high prices the kosher butcher was charging for his meat. From there they went on to the trouble the rabbi was having with his son who would not attend the synagogue, and then a rumor that one of the Harris girls was going out with a boy from Manchester. Right after this someone mentioned a name that made me prick up my ears.

  “What about Sarah?” asked Mrs. Mittleman, a loud-voiced, aggressive woman who lived at the lower end of the street. “What’s doing with her?”

  I listened now.

  “Yes,” someone else asked, “is she better?”

  The questions may well have been directed at Mrs. Jacobs, a one-eyed woman who lived with her little humpbacked husband and retarded son Rafael in the house next to the Harrises, the one usually best informed on this subject.

  At first, she shrugged, as if to ask why she should know more than anyone else. The fact that the walls separating our houses were paper-thin and you could hear everything that went on in the house next to you didn’t mean that she was listening. She made this clear. “How should I know?” she said. “I see Sarah sometimes, and what else do I know?”

  “Is she still sick or not?” insisted Mrs. Mittleman. “I hear she’s sick, and I hear she isn’t sick. So what’s the true story?”

  “I’ve seen her walking outside already,” volunteered Fanny Cohen, shaking her baby up and down this
time instead of from side to side. “I saw her even today.”

  The eyes turned questioningly to Mrs. Jacobs again, and still she said nothing, and Mrs. Mittleman exclaimed, “Today? In this weather? So how can she be sick?”

  “And if she isn’t sick, why isn’t she going to work?” one other woman wanted to know.

  It was puzzling, and it was up to Mrs. Jacobs to explain the matter. After a moment she burst out, “Why should she go to work? Why should she not go to work? Is she sick? Is she not sick? You think I have nothing to do all day except listen to them argue?”

  “They argue?” said Mrs. Mittleman, her voice probing, demanding. “About what?”

  “How should I know?” said Mrs. Jacobs irritably. “Who cares? Let them argue. So the father wants her back in the shop. The mother says no, she is not well enough yet. Sarah herself, all she wants to do is go out and get fresh air. The mother says the air is not good for her, she must lie on the sofa in the parlor. Sarah says this, the mother says that, the father says another thing. So it goes. You think they know what’s best? I know. A long time ago I told them. Sarah needs a husband, not fresh air or a sofa in the parlor. But my Rafael is not good enough for them.”

  An uncomfortable silence fell among them for a moment, and eyes glanced surreptitiously at one another. This situation was an old one, and they understood the bitterness that had crept into Mrs. Jacobs’s tone. She could never see her son as others did, a gawky boy who said foolish things, and whose mouth dribbled like an old man’s. Her attempts to make a match between him and Sarah had been going on for a long time.

  “My son is a good religious boy,” she said, pursuing the matter still further. “He was bar mitzvahed like any other boy on the street, he goes to shul every Saturday, and he makes a living. So he doesn’t operate a machine. He sweeps up and carries bundles onto the lorries, but he works steady and he brings home his pay every week, and what more can a girl want? You tell me.”

  But no one said anything. No one wanted to get involved in her problem. The uncomfortable silence lasted still a moment longer until, to their relief, one woman whose eyes had strayed to the window cried out, “Ah, here comes the Zarembar woman.”

  All eyes instantly went to the window, mine too. Yes, there she was, the fat little woman waddling her way up the street, struggling with her two bulging, squirming straw bags. Everyone noticed too how fast she seemed to be trying to walk.

  “She must be in a hurry to get home,” someone murmured.

  But they were all getting ready to follow her into her house. Those who had been drinking sour milk put their glasses down on the counter, and they all began pulling shawls over their heads. In another few moments the shop would be empty, but, to their surprise, instead of continuing up the street, she turned in at our house.

  We heard the front door open and then close after her. She had never done this before, and everyone looked at one another with puzzled expressions. In a moment she appeared in the doorway. She must have deposited her two bags of chickens in the lobby, because her hands were free, and we could hear the faint cluckings behind her. She stood there surveying us all, turning her head from this side to that and murmuring faint greetings. Her cheeks were fiery red from the wind and cold, and she was rubbing her two hands together, perhaps from the same thing, or was it from a certain suppressed excitement that seemed to emanate from her?

  They all sensed it, and were looking at her curiously. Certainly, this had nothing to do with chickens.

  “Come in,” my mother said. “Come to the fire and warm yourself.”

  She walked slowly up to the fire, with all eyes on her. There was not much of the fire left, but embers still glowed, and she held out her hands toward them, and in the meantime, an impatient Mrs. Mittleman called out, “So how are the chickens today? Did you bring any good ones?”

  “Yes, I have some very good ones. The best.” She threw this over her shoulder at Mrs. Mittleman, but absently, as if her mind was on something else.

  The others had noticed it. They waited, their curiosity growing. The fat little woman did not seem in a hurry. She held out her hands toward the fire. Yet there was every indication that she held some sort of secret within her. After another moment, she turned her head and glanced around the room once more, and asked my mother:

  “Mrs. Harris is not here?”

  My mother looked at her in surprise. Couldn’t she have seen for herself that she was not here? “Not unless she’s hiding under the counter,” she said mischievously, and glanced under herself.

  No one laughed, and my mother added, “You want to see her?”

  “No,” said Mrs. Zarembar.

  “Then why do you ask for her?”

  The others wanted to know that, too. But now the fat little woman was glancing around yet again, and this time her eyes lit on me.

  “He understands Yiddish?” she asked my mother in a low voice.

  “My children speak only English,” my mother said, and there might have been a touch of regret in her voice, because it was not the way she had wanted it. But it was the way it had turned out.

  However, her words seemed to reassure Mrs. Zarembar, and she turned around completely to face them, and began to speak, her voice so low at first that they had to come closer to listen, and soon they were all gathered around the counter in a tight little knot. I remained seated in my corner. The clouds outside had grown menacing and could be seen through the window, hanging low over the chimneys and rooftops of the row of houses opposite us in thick, black masses, and the room had darkened still more, and the embers in the fire were like tiny red eyes.

  The voices whispered. They were all speaking now, and gasps of horror intermingled with little cries of incredulity. I did not understand then what it was about, but I had the feeling that something terrible had happened, a catastrophe worse than anything that had ever befallen our street.

  I heard Mrs. Jacobs give a shout of triumph. “And my Rafael was not good enough for them!” she cried, lifting both arms up to heaven, to God in a gesture of gratitude.

  “Are you sure?” my mother asked, her voice trembling with emotion. “Are you absolutely sure?”

  “I swear!” cried Mrs. Zarembar. “On the graves of my father and mother, they should rest in peace, I swear.”

  There was a hubbub of voices. Clearly, this was the most sensational bit of gossip ever to come out of my mother’s shop. Mrs. Mittleman’s voice rose, dominating all the others, demanding, “This I must hear once more. Tell me again. Start from the beginning. I want to know everything that happened.”

  By this time they had forgotten my presence completely, and had begun to use English with their Yiddish, and as a result I was able to understand much of what Mrs. Zarembar repeated to them—repeated, I must say, with much relish.

  MRS. ZAREMBAR’S FORAGES into the country for chickens—good fat ones at low prices—usually followed the same route, taking her across the moor and past the peat bog where we sometimes dug for the chunks of peat that became our fuel when we could not afford coal, and then out into Cheadle, where the farms began in those days. The tram would have taken her out there much faster and more easily, but a tram cost money, and what else did she have to do with her time?

  Besides, she enjoyed her walk, even though she had difficulty walking, with legs that were thick and short and old. But her awkward footsteps took her through woods and fields, and past trickling brooks that sparkled in the sun like jewels. In the summer, the fields would be covered with glowing buttercups and daisies and bluebells that gave off a rich, perfumed smell. Even in the winter, with harsh winds blowing like today, it was enjoyable, and her cheeks tingled with health. She had made her stop at the farm where she purchased her chickens, and after much haggling had concluded her business, and was on her way home, weighed down on either side by a squirming bag, refreshed by the cup of tea that the farmer’s wife always gave her.

  She was walking through a huge grove of old oak and beech
trees, whose bare branches swayed in the wind and gave off a soughing sound that was like a deep sigh. Her feet trod softly on the carpet of dead, rotted leaves that lay on the ground, and a loamy smell rose up from the earth. She was alone, it seemed, with peace and quiet all around her, when suddenly she saw two people walking some distance ahead of her, moving very slowly and in dream-like fashion, a young man and a girl, with their arms linked around each other’s waists. They were lovers evidently, and every so often they paused to kiss.

  “They kissed?” Mrs. Mittleman interrupted, breathlessly.

  “Yes.” Mrs. Zarembar frowned, obviously annoyed at the interruption.

  Yes, they kissed several times, long, passionate kisses, enfolded tightly in each other’s arms. Then they would walk on. Mrs. Zarembar, following them slowly, smiled to herself. How well she remembered her own romantic days. Perhaps she would have deviated from her story and gone into an account of those days if there hadn’t been mutters of complaint from the other women.

  She continued. They were walking very slowly ahead of her, and she deliberately slowed down so that she would not catch up with them, because it was such pleasure watching them. She did not want to spoil it with her presence and the clucking of her chickens. Then, gradually, something began to dawn on her. She saw them only from behind, but was beginning to realize there was something familiar about them. They stopped for another kiss, and now it came to her. Of course! How could she have been mistaken?

  The heads drew closer as she came to this part, because her voice had lowered. I was not able to catch the words she spoke, but again came the same gasps of horror, and once again Mrs. Jacobs triumphantly cast her one good eye and both arms upward to heaven and shouted, “And my Rafael was not good enough for them!” Only this time adding, “Now it becomes a question, is she good enough for my son?”