The Songs

by Charles Elton

  In the mornings, his uncle told him what he had to do that day, not that the tasks varied very much. At this time of year it was mostly hay-making. His uncle had taught him how to saddle up the horse and attach the finger bar mower to the harness. She was a mangy old nag with matted hair, not the kind of sleek beast with a shiny coat that might be ridden by a proper member of the landed gentry. Maurice had never ridden before but his uncle seemed to think that no lessons were needed. After an awkward start, he found that it was not that difficult. Anyway, with the heavy mower behind it, the horse moved so slowly across the fields that it was unlikely that any harm would come to him.

  After Maurice had cut the grass and it had been left to dry for a few days, he would attach a trailer to the horse and pick it all up, which took several days, and then unload it into the barn. There were the cows to be milked, but his uncle tended to do that — presumably because he could sit on a stool and not use his damaged leg. Maurice was left to muck out the stables, which was not a pleasant task, a back-breaking job that left his trousers and shoes covered in shit. When he first went to the farm, unused to physical labor, his muscles ached so badly by the end of the day that he could hardly move but after a week or two his body had begun to get used to it.

  All in all, Maurice thought, it could have been worse. It was a hot summer and he liked being outside most of the day. He didn’t know how long he was going to be there for, or what awful plan his parents were concocting for his future. There had been no communication from them yet.

  A couple of weeks after Maurice had seen Isaac Herzl for the first time he encountered him again, this time alone. Maurice was walking up the lane away from the farm, and saw a figure heading towards him. Even though the boy was far away, he recognized him instantly. As they got closer to each other, Maurice did not know whether to look at him or keep his eyes averted. The boy obviously had no such dilemma: his gaze was firmly fixed in the other direction. As they passed, Maurice smiled at him, but the boy did not even look at him. A few yards further on, Maurice halted and turned.

  “Excuse me,” he said.

  The boy did not stop. Maybe he had not heard him so Maurice repeated it more loudly. The boy finally turned round and looked at him with a blank expression on his face. He was carrying a satchel and he moved it nervously from one shoulder to the other.

  “Hello,” Maurice said, and walked towards him. He had no idea what to say next. He was out of practice talking to people. Arthur would have had the boy engaged in friendly conversation in a second.

  “Do you live around here?”

  The boy spoke curtly: “Why?”

  “I just wondered,” he said feebly.

  “Yes, I live up the road.”

  He spoke in a very precise way, separating out the words so there were little spaces between them. Maurice could tell he was not English — he had the remnant of some foreign accent.

  “Are you farming?” he asked. The boy did not speak. He pushed on: “I’m working for my uncle on his farm over there,” and he pointed.

  “Yes, I think I asked him for some directions once. He is a very rude man.”

  Maurice gave a little laugh. “He’s very suspicious of strangers.” Then he added quickly, “I’m not.”

  The boy nodded. “Well,” he said. “I must go,” but he did not move off immediately.

  “Where are you from?”

  The boy clearly did not want to answer. Finally he said, “I am German.”

  Maurice could not help a look of surprise on his face. Weren’t they meant to be in internment camps, or had they all been let out after the war?

  The boy suddenly laughed. “Don’t worry, I am not a German spy. That’s what people around here think. I’m a Jewish refugee. I’ve lived in England for a long time. I am a citizen. I have a British passport.”

  What now? “My name is Maurice,” he said desperately.

  “Isaac,” the boy said after a moment. “Well, Iz. That is what people call me.” Now they had been introduced, Maurice put his hand out. The boy looked down as if he did not know what to do with it. Finally he shook it.

  “Well, goodbye,” he said.

  Maurice followed him. “I saw you with your horse the other day.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you mind if I walk with you?”

  “You seemed to be going the other way.”

  “I’ve got to go back to the farm. I’ve forgotten something,” he said. It did not sound entirely convincing. Iz shrugged his shoulders and they walked in silence for a while.

  Then Iz said something unexpected. “I have an uncle in Germany with your name. Well, I had an uncle in Germany. I think it’s spelled differently though: M-O-R-I-T-Z.”

  “I’m M-A-U-R.”

  “Well, that’s the posh English way, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not posh. My parents think they are, but really they’re just bourgeois. Actually, we come from peasant stock,” he said with a hint of pride in his voice. They had reached the fork in the lane which led to the farm.

  “This is where I live,” Maurice said.

  “I’m going up there,” Iz said, pointing in the other direction. “We live at the Kurtz Farm.” He raised his hand in a gesture of farewell. “Well, goodbye.”

  Iz had gone about twenty yards when he turned round and shouted something that made Maurice smile: “My parents were members of the bourgeoisie, too! There are a lot of them.” Then he gave a little laugh and vanished round the corner of the lane.

  When Maurice saw Isaac Herzl for the third time, it did not go so well. He was in the field picking up the dry grass and putting it on the trailer when he heard the sound of hooves clacking on the road. He turned round. Like the first time he had seen Iz, he and his friends were sitting in a cart pulled by their horse. Iz was at the front holding the reins. He was wearing the kind of cap that Maurice had seen Lenin wearing in photographs. He walked to the edge of the field and raised his hand, but the cart passed him. Nobody answered his wave. In fact, nobody even looked at him, not even Iz.

  It was a week before they met again. Sitting on the wall that ran along the lane having his lunch — two thick slices of bread filled with Spam — Maurice could see Iz coming down the lane towards him walking beside the horse and guiding it with the reins.

  There was an awkward look on Iz’s face when he saw him. Maurice decided not to say anything. After the other day, he did not feel very friendly. To his surprise Iz walked over to him.

  “Hello,” he said.

  Maurice nodded at him. Iz tied the horse’s reins to the gate. There was silence for a moment. Maurice was not going to make it easy for him. Isaac Herzl was the one who should make amends.

  “What are you doing today?” Iz said. “It’s hot, isn’t it?”

  “The hay. That’s what I’m doing today,” Maurice said curtly.

  “I saw you the other day. When we were on the cart.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I saw you, too.”

  “People are suspicious of us,” Iz said in a rush. “They’re not friendly. Someone put a brick through the window once. Our cart has been overturned. The others are nervous. We have to keep ourselves to ourselves. I’m sorry. It must have seemed rude to you.”

  Maurice nodded. “Oh, I see,” he said. He felt better now. “I can imagine it must be difficult for you living in a place like this. The people have no vision.” Then, as a peace offering, he added, “If you’re hungry you could have some of my sandwich.”

  “That is very kind, but no thank you. We keep kosher.” Maurice was a bit hazy about exactly what that involved, but he was not going to ask.

  “What about an apple?”

  “Yes, I will have one. Thank you. I like fruit.”

  He took his satchel off and sat down on the wall beside Maurice. He took a big bite out of the apple.

  “Can I ask you — why are you here? I mean, in Kent,” Maurice said. Iz did not immediately reply and Maurice could tell that he was deciding
whether to brush him off with an evasive answer.

  “I’m here to train. I’m in Habonim. It’s the Jewish youth organization. Like your Boy Scouts, except we do more important things than learn how to tie knots. Your Scouts are just a totalitarian organization.”

  What a wonderful phrase that was! “Well, yes, of course they are,” Maurice said loftily. “I was never a Scout.” That was not entirely true: he had been a Cub for a while when he was younger.

  “We’re training to be farmers. I will be going to Israel soon.”

  Maurice was impressed. “But aren’t they stopping people going?” He had read that somewhere.

  “Yes. The British have fucked us.”

  He was thrilled by that. Maurice had never used the word himself.

  “You blockade the ships. There are millions of Jews trying to go there and you only let a tiny amount of people in every month.”

  Maurice gave a nervous laugh. “Well, it’s not me exactly. I don’t agree with it at all. It’s the army, the gauleiters. Isn’t that what you call them in German?” Iz looked rather impressed.

  “So how are you going to get there?” Maurice asked.

  “It is difficult but not impossible. There are ways,” Iz said. Maurice knew that was an evasive answer if he had ever heard one, but he decided not to pursue it. “How long have you been in England?”

  “I came over when I was eight. On a boat with other children. They managed to get some of us out. My parents stayed behind. And my brother, Gabriel. They thought he was too young to go. Then I was in a Jewish children’s home in Liverpool. I came to the farm last year. It’s a kind of commune.”

  A proper commune — how exciting that sounded! “You’re all equal then? No bosses? Group decisions and all that?”

  “Well,” Iz said, “it’s more like sharing the cooking. And we’re all meant to repair the machinery as well, but of course the girls don’t help.”

  “Oh, I see,” Maurice said. “And your parents and brother? Will they be coming here now that the war is over?”

  “They’re all dead,” he said. “I should think they’re all a great pile of ashes in some camp.”

  Maurice tried not to look shocked, but Iz saw it on his face. “It’s difficult, but you have to cut sentimentality out of your life,” he said. “It’s the future not the past we must try to concentrate on.”

  Maurice was impressed by that. “My parents aren’t brave enough to die for their beliefs. They wouldn’t ever be martyrs.”

  “I don’t think my parents were being brave,” Iz said. “Being murdered is not dying for your beliefs, you know,” he said.

  Maurice could feel his face turning red. He looked away from Iz, embarrassed. He changed the subject. “So — how is your training going? Do you like farming?”

  “It’s a skill. I am acquiring other ones, too. I’m learning to shoot. Only rabbits at the moment. I’m going to need that in Israel.”

  “Are there a lot of rabbits there?” Maurice said.

  Iz laughed. “I won’t be shooting rabbits! Don’t you know what’s happening there? It’s a battlefield! Everyone’s against us — the Arabs, the British. We’re fighting every day!”

  Maurice had never felt more ignorant. Here they were: two boys of the same age. One was almost a revolutionary and the other was…what?

  “Isn’t fighting against your religion?” Maurice asked uncertainly. He wished he had his father’s Encyclopaedia Britannica to look “Jewish” up in.

  Iz laughed. “We are not Quakers. We’re a political group. We do not do things like observe the Sabbath. I suppose we might go to the synagogue if there was one close to here but there isn’t.”

  “Of course, I’m not religious myself. Not at all,” Maurice said.

  “Anyway, the Sabbath is really rather foolish,” Iz said. “From sunset on Friday night you are not meant to do anything — not cook or read or turn a light on. It would mean we couldn’t work on Saturdays. Anyway, Friday’s our night off. That’s when we have fun. We go swimming in the quarry if it’s hot. We cook something good. Some of us are musical so we play chamber music. And we’re learning to dance. Someone comes to teach us.”

  “Like the waltz?” Maurice’s mother had tried to make him take ballroom dancing lessons.

  Iz laughed. “No! Things like the Hora. It would probably look like Scottish dancing to you. Sometimes there’s a bottle or two. We’re not meant to drink, but you have to break the rules sometimes, don’t you think?”

  Maurice nodded vigorously. “Yes, I do. One absolutely must.”

  Today was Friday. A vain hope came into his mind: maybe Iz would invite him for the evening. He could get to know them all. Maybe he could become friendly with the girl he had seen on the cart. But he knew it would not happen.

  “Do you get on with everyone at your farm?” he asked. “Are they your friends?”

  Iz shrugged. “I like some of them. They are very juvenile though. I think it’s because they are all sexually frustrated. Maybe there’s bromide in the water. The girls never go all the way. You might get a kiss if you’re lucky. The boys are all desperate. They have competitions: they jizz on matzo biscuits and the last one to shoot has to eat his up.”

  Maurice’s jaw dropped in amazement. Then they began to laugh. “That’s why I’m going to Palestine,” Iz snorted. “Girls always let you do it to them. Don’t think there isn’t a lot of shmushka over there!”

  After supper that night, he told his uncle he was going for a walk — an unlikely thing to do, but his uncle just said, “Lock the door when you come back. I don’t want thieves.”

  He walked down the track to the lane and headed in the direction Iz had gone the other day. After a mile or so he came to a set of iron gates padlocked together with a thick chain. About a hundred yards away he could see the silhouette of a house with two smaller buildings on either side, maybe barns or cottages. There was light coming through the downstairs windows of the big house. He climbed over the gate and moved cautiously towards it. There was the sound of music. He went as close to the windows as he dared and looked in. He could see a big room, like a hall. The tables had been pushed to one side to create a space in the middle and about fifteen people were dancing clumsily. Maurice could see Iz.

  Music was blaring out from a gramophone and then it stopped. An older woman came from the side of the room waving her hands. “No! No! No!” she shouted. “Are you complete dunces? You have feet like blocks of concrete!”

  She moved amongst the dancers and rearranged them in a circle. They stood there awkwardly and she sighed in exasperation. She went up to a couple standing next to each other and thrust them together. The others followed suit and took each other’s hands. The woman turned on the gramophone again, and the dancers began to move slowly round in a circle. They got faster as the music speeded up and the woman began clapping her hands in time. “Yes!” she shouted, “that’s more like it. Yes!” Then, as they were still going round, they all moved a few steps forward into the center of the circle, then moved back. Some of them began laughing with pleasure. They were getting into the swing of it.

  Maurice was enthralled. These were people with a sense of purpose. They were working to change the world. They deserved to let their hair down sometimes. This was not like Arthur and his friends having a treasure hunt at a middle-class birthday party.

  After a while they took a break and came outside. Maurice moved back to the cover of the trees. He stood very still, but he knew that it was too dark for anyone to really see him. They were talking and laughing and he thought he could hear Iz’s voice, but whether it was him or not, what he said was lost on the evening breeze.

  When they had gone back in, he turned and walked back to the gate. He suddenly felt very lonely. He wished he could be part of them. But then, as he went down the lane, an idea came into his head. Tomorrow was Saturday. It was his day off, and he would hitchhike into Ashford. He had a plan.

  A week later, Maurice was wor
king in the field when he saw Iz walking towards him. He felt pleased: Iz had been looking for him. It was hot, and Iz had taken his shirt off. The top of his dungarees was hanging down over his trousers and his satchel was over his bare shoulders. He was holding his Lenin cap in his hand. Maurice was surprised at how thin Iz was. He thought he would be tanned and muscular from working in the fields, but he was rather like Maurice: pale and scrawny. Of course, fighting for a cause was a mental discipline as well as physical, Maurice thought. You didn’t have to be Charles Atlas.

  Iz raised his hand in greeting. “Hello there!” he said cheerfully.

  “Good morning,” Maurice said, and shook Iz’s hand rather formally. “How are you?”

  “I’m very well, thank you. It is a lovely day.”

  “Yes, isn’t it?”

  “I think it may rain tomorrow.”

  Maurice hoped it was not going to go on like this for too long: they were being shy with each other. He sat down on the wall and Iz sat beside him. He put the satchel on his knees.

  “You’re always carrying that satchel,” Maurice said. “What do you keep in it?”

  Iz shrugged. “There is a lot of pilfering at the farm. Things are always going missing.”

  That didn’t sound very communal. “Oh, I see,” Maurice said.

  Iz looked away. “I never had many things. I could hardly bring anything when I came from Germany. I do not want to lose what I have.”

  To have nothing — what could that be like? Maurice hated himself for being so insensitive. It was the way he had been conditioned: to assume that everyone was like himself, used to warm houses and food and the kind of deadening security that the middle classes aspired to. He wanted to imagine how life was for other people, for people like Iz who had lived on the edge and knew what they wanted to fight for.

  “When will you go to Israel?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I have not been informed yet. I hope it will be soon.”

  Maurice felt a pang. He had not had a friend for a long time, and he did not want to lose him.