Maurice knew that she had seen the mark of Cain, the noisome reminder of his people’s darkest hour. He had opened his eyes as she was staring at it. Kitty pushed her way through the heavy water towards him. She was no longer conscious of the unflattering bulges of her swimsuit.
“My Swiss Bank Account,” Maurice said, hiding the figures, like blue tears, beneath the water. “In case I forget.”
Kitty did not pursue the subject. They spoke of the water, sitting on it, feeling it beneath them like a chair. But Kitty remembered the attestation, it remained before her eyes, even when Maurice had showered and dressed and put on the zippered jacket.
Back in the coach, approaching the Lost Cities of Gommorah and Sodom, Zvi repeated the story of Lot’s ill-fated wife, and his passengers searched good-humouredly for her outline among the tortuous salt shapes.
It was getting late. In the going down of the sun, the stark mountains of Moab were mirrored in the green and silver nothingness of the Dead Sea. If you saw the static scene – with its resplendent beauty, its iridescent reflections – reproduced on a postcard or an ashtray in the gift shop, Kitty thought, you would not believe it. In the Negev – ‘the word “negev” means dry’, Avi had said, it seemed so long ago, the brush of the setting sun had used pink and rose and apricot to tip the brown hills.
Kitty wanted to cry. She had cried at Beth Hatefutsoth with Sydney, the Museum of the Diaspora where the ill-starred fortunes of her people had been encapsulated, both in place and time, under one roof; the Jewish family, the Jewish face; sculptured groups, and historical transparencies of different countries in different centuries, illustrating the cycle of Jewish life, from birth to death, against the rhythm of the Jewish year; nineteenth-century Galicia; the thirteenth-century Rhine; Jews in North Africa, Poland, Lithuania, Bratislavia, Salonika and Fez. Models of synagogues – many desecrated and destroyed – in cities and villages and in shtetls which were neither, but which with their own leadership, their own social unit, encompassed the whole world. ‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts.’ The Hebrew texts had illumined the wealth and continuity of Jewish culture sustained by the Hebrew language. Through documents and audio-visual aids were portrayed the major contributions to literature and education, philosophy and art, of the people of the Book. Monotheism, relativity and psychoanalysis; it had been too much for one afternoon. From Abraham through the streets of Toledo to the creation of a National Home. Too much for one lifetime. One person. Emigration from eastern Europe; the return to Zion; a train in Czechoslovakia; the teeming decks of the immigrant ship Exodus. The history of her antecedents in suffering and in tears.
Maurice took a stick of gum from his pocket and gave it to her silently. They left the biblical mountains come alive on the distant shore, the dykes, the fossilised awesomeness of the salt layers evaporated from the marshes, and climbed the dusty road towards the new town of Arad.
Kitty thought she had seen everything. That Israel could hold no more surprises. One moment they were among the parched hills, the barren plains and seconds later a sophisticated ‘Brighton’ with paved streets and lively shops in the middle of nowhere – Arad. In its arcade Kitty bought a canvas depicting a winding street in the Old City of Jerusalem – together with the appropriate wools – for Addie, hoping it might occupy her as she waited for the healing of the broken ankle. She was paying the assistant in the crowded shop, counting out the unfamiliar shekels, when she heard Avi’s whistle.
It was getting late. It was getting dark. Leaving the brightness of the electric town they plunged once more into the sudden desert. Zvi put the lights on in the coach and they snaked, like a single glow-worm over the swift black road. Avi, indefatigable – the day had been long – goaded his weary passengers into song; his native Hava Negilla; ‘Old MacDonald had a farm’ in which Kitty joined; Allouette for the French. Enthusiasm compensating for harmony, they sang ‘Jerusalem the Golden’ in four languages, supplementing the words with claps.
When they stopped at Beerhseva to let a few of the party out, it was if they were family, Zvi’s family – as if they had known each other for years.
In the coach, silent now, many sleeping from exhaustion, the fervour of the impromptu concert past, Kitty thought that it had been one of the best days of her life – was it only that morning she had stood on the summit of Masada? – and did not want it to end. She was aware of Maurice next to her but did not speak, reluctant to break the spell. She was grateful to him for mitigating her loneliness, for rekindling her confidence in her own right to exist, for ‘making’ the last few days of her holiday. Tomorrow morning she would leave for England. On Sunday, Maurice would fly back to New York. They had exchanged addresses. She would send him a postcard of Westminster Abbey or the Tower of London, explaining how much she had appreciated his company.
As they approached the first lights of Eilat, girdled by the mountains and the sea, Maurice put his hand over hers. It was as touching – he seemed so unemotional – as it was unexpected. Beneath the reassuring warmth of his fingers Kitty remained still. The contact, skin to skin, brought back poignantly one of the harshest aspects of her widowhood; that there was no one to touch gratuitously, no human form – other than the grandchildren – whose embrace was not taboo. By this simple gesture Maurice had brought her back to life as surely as if it were she who had died, sent the blood coursing through veins which, since Sydney’s death, she had imagined dry.
Thirteen
“Every seventh day a miracle comes to pass, the resurrection of the soul, of the soul of man and of the soul of all things.” In instructing Sarah on the importance of Friday night in the Jewish week, Mrs Halberstadt had done her work well. To Josh it was ironic. Having freed himself from the unrelenting ritual of the eve of the Sabbath which he had observed in so far as it satisfied his father when he was alive – he was being re-initiated into the preparatory ceremonies of the day of rest by Sarah.
“Inwardness,” Mrs Halberstadt had said, “important though it may be, is not enough. There must be likewise be an outward form, a pattern of conduct, a definite way.” To this end Sarah had prepared for Kitty’s homecoming. While they waited for Norman – who was the guest that on Friday evenings it was the mitzvah to invite – Josh, in the sitting-room, listened to his mother’s tales of Israel, and Sarah examined the table she had set with the white cloth kept especially for the Sabbath. The candles in their silver candlesticks, two of them symbolising the unity underlying all apparent duality – man and woman, speech and silence, creation and revelation – had already been lit by Kitty. While Sarah watched, she had, with a circular motion, drawn her hands around the flames towards her face, directing the warmth and light of the seventh day unto herself. Covering her eyes she had recited the blessing – acknowledging the fact that the commandment she was carrying out was dictated directly by God – then silently added a few personal prayers, after which she kissed her daughter-in-law warmly and thanked her for all she had done.
To Sarah it had been no hardship. She was fascinated by the psychological and physical dynamics of the Jewish week, which existed only because of the Sabbath. To begin with, the days, in Hebrew, had no independent names, but were referred to by their relationship to the seventh day. Sunday was the ‘first day’, Monday the ‘second’ and so on, until the Sabbath – prepared for with the utmost care and detail – was ushered in and welcomed like a bride. Each physical preparation had its spiritual equivalent. The dwelling must be cleaned and extra delicious foods cooked; the mind must be emptied of all weekday thoughts, and ‘matters of consequence’ left behind. Any new clothes which had been recently bought should be worn for the first time; there should be money apportioned on Friday afternoon for charity. The table must be set as beautifully as possible; some moments should be spent in meditation, in reviewing the past week and allowing it to fall into perspective. There was an added bonus. The Sabbath, according to Mrs Halberstadt, gave everyone an additional soul w
hose presence as it entered the body on Friday night, to depart at the close of Shabbat, could be clearly felt by those who observed it. The basic theme of the twenty-four hours – perpetuated in the evening prayers and in the propitiousness (according to tradition) of sexual love – was creation; the atmosphere – good food, candlelight, songs, quiet talk, enjoyment of both the corporeal and metaphysical love of the family – sensual.
Sarah was sad that she had not known Josh’s father. The Friday nights, as Josh had described them, which he had found rigid and oppressive, and to which she would certainly not have been invited by Sydney, seemed, she thought, to instigate a unique moratorium. The frenetic activity of the secular week was suspended, and a 24 hour respite enjoyed from the tyranny of the office and the telephone, the vagaries of public transport, and the contemporary nightmare of overpopulated cities and roads. Man had become the slave of the environment that he had invented, and the Jewish Sabbath seemed to make sense, in that, for one day out of the seven, he could free himself from the demands of a society – in which he had become increasingly depersonalised – to rediscover his basic humanity. The daily chores of winnowing, grinding and threshing, forbidden from sunset to sunset, may no longer have been relevant, but their modern counterparts stemmed directly from the original 39 proscribed acts. Checking the preparations she had made for Josh’s mother, as instructed by Mrs Halberstadt, Sarah had an overwhelming sensation of the day’s almost supernatural power.
While in her sitting-room – describing to Josh the highlights of her holiday and the unfounded terrors of her airborne journey home – Kitty waited for Norman. Norman, outside the flat overlooking Hampstead Heath, waited for Sandra. It surprised him that he had managed to get through the day. He had woken to images of Sandra from a night in which she had dominated his dreams. He forgot to time his breakfast egg, boiling it hard; locked the front door leaving his car keys on the hall table and got to the end of the road before he noticed his socks – one blue, one black. The specific demands of the forthcoming day had been so much gibberish coming from the lips of Mr Monty, and to decipher the hieroglyphics on the correspondence on his desk he would need a Rosetta Stone. He had tried to write with the cap on his pen, stapled the first page of one set of property particulars to the second of another and spilled his paper clips in a silver eruption on to the dusty floor. When dealing with clients on the telephone he mouthed phrases in the hope that they were appropriate, for in truth he had not heard what they said; when they sat before his desk, seeking guidance, their forms dissolved to leave Sandra, with her translucent skin, her slate grey eyes, within tantalising reach. No day had seemed longer. Not even the Day of Atonement with its 25 hours of neither food nor drink. Each time he looked at his watch, the progress of the hands seemed minimal. There had been work after hours, as on a Friday he knew there would be: negotiations he must complete before the weekend; and details to be prepared, appointments to be arranged, for the weekly crescendo of viewing – frequently futile, regarded by some as diversion to fill the vacant hours of a Saturday morning.
When Mr Monty had finally called it a day, Norman had, he supposed, said his good nights and driven his car through the bottle-neck of Finchley Road and up the long hill towards the Heath but he could not recall getting there. He had rung the bell on the entry phone of the outer door of the flats and listened, a grin on his face, for Sandra’s voice. There was no reply. Entering the block with a homecoming man he ran up to the second floor. There was a note on the door, fastened with sellotape: ‘Norman I won’t be long’. Glad of an opportunity to allow his thudding heart to revert to its normal rhythm, he sat down on the stairs to wait.
“I can’t think what’s happened to him,” Kitty said, meaning Norman, as Josh took the white satin cappel from his pocket and covered his head preparatory to making the blessing over the wine in the small, chased silver cup which had been a wedding present to his parents from his Uncle Juda.
“Well, there’s no reply from the office,” Josh said, turning the red-edged pages of The Authorised Daily Prayer Book, immortalised in translation by the late Reverend Singer, to find the Sabbath Evening kiddush.
“I hope he hasn’t had an accident,” Kitty said. Since her traumatic flight to Israel and her hair-raising experiences while she was there, she had had accidents on the brain. “It’s not like Norman.”
“And it was evening and it was morning…” Josh said. His Hebrew was less fluent than Sydney’s whose melodious voice he had not inherited. “…and on the seventh day God had finished his work which he had made; and he rested…”
It was nice to be home, Kitty thought, looking at Josh standing where, on a Friday night, Sydney had always stood, at Sarah, motionless by her chair while her husband sang the benediction, following his every word. It was good to be back among your own things. Among your own. She had enjoyed the holiday more, much more than she had expected she would. She had tried to keep her enjoyment of it in a low key when she had popped into Addie, given her the tapestry from the arcade in Arad. “Talk to anyone?” Addie had said, wanting to hear every detail of the hotel, a verbatim account of Kitty’s every waking moment, while she, confined to her flat, nursed her ankle in its plaster. Kitty told her about the solicitor from Hampstead Garden Suburb who knew the Klopmans, and about the family from Solihull who had befriended her. She did not mention Maurice Morgenthau. She did not mention him on the telephone to Rachel when she had phoned – her tumbling words racing the pips – from Somerset where she was on holiday with Patrick. She had not mentioned him to Carol who was relieved that Kitty had enjoyed her holiday, and had not spoken of him either to Sarah or to Josh.
“…Blessed art thou, O Lord,” Josh said, “who hallowest the Sabbath.”
He drank from the cup then handed it to his mother, who said the blessing over wine before she sipped. When it was Sarah’s turn she held the cup and looked to Josh for guidance. He said the words slowly and Sarah repeated them in the unfamiliar Hebrew.
Josh removed the embroidered cloth from the two loaves – symbolising the double portion of manna which was received in the wilderness on Sabbath Eve to provide for the Day when none fell – of the traditional plaited bread sprinkled with poppy seeds, which Sarah had bought in the Jewish bakery and set before him, and picked up the knife.
“You have to break it,” Sarah said. “The knife is a weapon of war!”
Josh looked at her.
“Honestly. Mrs Halberstadt said so. ‘And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks’.”
His father had always used the special silver bread knife, the word Shabbat engraved on its handle. One learned something new every day. Josh broke small pieces of the bread, then sprinkled them with salt: ‘By the sweat of your brow shall you get bread to eat’. He did not hand the pieces directly to his mother and to Sarah but offered them from a small plate for it was not from man that one received one’s bread. The motze ceremony over, Kitty and Josh sat down, while Sarah went into the kitchen for the soup which she had made to replace her disastrous gefülte fish.
All thoughts of his empty place at Aunty Kitty’s table had fled from Norman who had had every intention of being there. He had waited for half an hour on the stairs outside Sandra’s flat wishing he had stopped to buy an evening paper. At every foot on the staircase, every ascent of the lift which sped past the floor where he sat, his heart began to race again. When Sandra came, laden with parcels, he wondered if she was real.
“They’ve fixed the fridge,” she said, her arms around the supermarket carriers, “I had to get something to put in it!”
After Capetown Sandra was radiant. Norman had not remembered her so beautiful, so brown. He took the keys from her strong white teeth and opened the door.
“I’m really sorry, Norman,” she said as he followed her down the corridor towards the kitchen. “How have you been?”
Devastated. He was devastated now.
“Fine.”
&
nbsp; “Had a good Christmas?”
He had had a kipper with Aunty Mirrie who did not celebrate it.
He helped her stow the milk and the butter and the eggs and the bacon and the yoghurt, in various flavours, and the three varieties of cheeses into the fridge, which swallowed them up with no trouble. It was gold and vast and had an interior light and an exterior light over a gadget which dispensed iced water and ice – cubes or crushed – at the touch of a lever.
“Isn’t it magnificent?” Sandra said, meaning the kitchen. And indeed it was. With its cherry-wood units, and its ceramic floor, and its squeezers and mixers and toasters and grinders and waste disposal and trash compactor, it bore no resemblance to the old-fashioned room, with a single sink, for which Norman had apologised to Sandra what seemed so very long ago.
“Come on. I’ll show you the rest.”
In the sitting-room the two enormous sofas were covered in white knobbly wool. Norman had to sit on them at Sandra’s insistence, to admire the square black-lacquered coffee table, on which she had already put some glossy magazines in neat alignment and an arrangement of dried flowers which was repeated on the dining-table at the other end of the room.
“Like it?” Sandra asked.
“It’s amazing,” Norman said, looking at the cream jersey dress which caressed her body beneath the fur coat which she had been too excited by her new furniture to take off.
“I’ll show you the bedrooms.”
Hilton’s and Milton’s were identical. Small, but furnished now with everything a small boy might want. Norman thought of his own room, as a boy, with its bed, its corner washbasin and its single wardrobe.
“And this is mine!”
Sandra flung open the door of the master bedroom. The largest bed Norman had ever seen occupied almost the whole of one wall.
Rose of Jericho Page 12
