The Invisible Wall

by Harry Bernstein

  Florrie had come out with fire in her eyes and hands on her hips, the typical stance of a Lancashire woman about to have a fight with another woman. We had seen them standing like that facing one another when they came out of the pubs on Saturday night, their faces flushed, their bosoms heaving, their legs planted firmly on the ground, their eyes fixed on one another.

  It was like that when Florrie came out of the shop to face Mrs. Green. The two stood just a few feet apart, both with hands on hips. Freddy, sitting in the wheelchair in front of the shop where Mrs. Green had deposited him, had a good view of them. The crowd ringing them, partially on the sidewalk and spilling out onto the cobblestones, was silent. Florrie spoke first.

  “Now what’s this all about?” she asked.

  “It’s all about your brother and you and your little game won’t work, that’s what it’s all about,” retorted Mrs. Green. Her hair was dangling over her face, and her shawl had slipped down to her shoulders. “I brought ’im back to you,” she said, “where he belongs. You’re not going to shove ’im onto me and me Annie.”

  “Oh, is that it?” said Florrie, and in contrast to Mrs. Green she looked almost attractive and bosomy, with her rosy cheeks, the color deepened now by her anger, and the rich golden hair plaited and hanging behind her. “Seems to me it wasn’t so long ago when you’d have kissed me arse just to be allowed to look at me brother and ’ave him call on your daughter.”

  Mrs. Green gave a cackle. “And now,” she said, “looks like you’d kiss me arse just to let your brother talk to me daughter. It’s just a pity you couldn’t ’ave ’im do that when me Annie needed him for the child ’e gave her and which you said ’e never did but which everybody knows ’e did. It’s too late now. Y’aven’t got a brother, only ’alf a brother, an ’alf brother.” She cackled again, showing her toothless gums. “And an ’alf’s not enough.”

  “First place,” said Florrie, inching forward a foot or so, “Me brother had nothing to do with that child, and you know it. Considering as ’ow your Annie was rolling about in th’ park with one after another you’d never know whose child it was. Second place, if it was his, as you say, then a father’s got a right to be with his child. So you’re stuck either way. And, third place, as far as kissing your arse is concerned, I wouldn’t touch your arse with a ten-foot pole that’s been used for scraping out a midden.”

  “First place for you,” replied Mrs. Green, “me Annie never rolled about in th’ park with any man. She was just misled, that’s all, and by your brother, who’s your misfortune now, and yours to keep. And second and third place,” she too moved forward slightly, so that the two women were very close to each other, “when it comes to rolling about in th’ park, a whore like you shouldn’t be casting reflection on other women’s character.”

  “Who you calling a whore?” said Florrie, advancing still another inch, her eyes beginning to flash dangerously.

  “Who do you think?” said Mrs. Green. “Me shadow? Don’t tell me, in all those years you spent behind that bar y’aven’t found yourself a little sideline?”

  It was Florrie who struck first, with the back of her hand, and with the crack of a whip, catching Mrs. Green on the side of the face and causing her to stagger backward a little. She quickly regained her balance, and struck out herself, with the back of her hand, and with a similar crack, making the flush on Florrie’ s cheek an even deeper red.

  The two then began to circle each other warily, hands raised in fighting position. An excited stir went through the crowd. A little, almost joyous cry went up as the two women lunged at each other in full battle, hands claws reaching for hair. At first, they were like two horned animals, with horns locked, backing this way and that, head to head, fingers buried in each other’s hair, and then they began to thrust and jab and scratch and tear—and bite—and they both fell clutching each other, and rolled on the ground, and bit savagely, screaming with pain, blood covering their faces.

  The crowd swelled as more and more people rushed from other streets to witness the fight. There were roars of excitement and the crowd edged closer and people shoved and pushed and elbowed to see better, while the women fought on the ground, their skirts flinging upward, showing long drawers and petticoats and flashes of bare flesh, and blood began to stain the rough cobblestones.

  I do not know how it ended. I was frightened by what I was seeing, and I let myself be pushed onto the outskirts of the circle by the wild mob of spectators. I was shivering and sick, and then I glanced toward Freddy. He was sitting there, unnoticed by the crowd. He looked just as sick as I felt. He was huddled in that wheelchair, just his head and neck showing above the blankets. Then our eyes met, and he motioned to me.

  I went over to him, and he said in a low voice, “’arry, take me away from here. For God’s sake, wheel me away somewheres.”

  I was only too glad to get away from the scene. I wheeled him around the corner onto Wood Street. We went past the taproom entrance, and to the end of the street to where the steep hill that ran up to the park began.

  When we came to it, Freddy said, “Do you think you could push me up th’ hill, ’arry? I’d like to go to the park. It’d be nice in there.”

  I said I could do it, and we began the climb. We ran alongside the rec at first, a large playground at the foot of the park, covered with layers of crushed cinders that sometimes cut badly when you fell. It was here that I had often watched Freddy play soccer for the county team, and where crowds used to cheer him. An iron rail separated it from the road that went up the hill, and Freddy smiled a little as he glanced through the rails, doubtless remembering his days there.

  “We had some games out there, eh, lad?” he said. “Oh, I liked me game of soccer. There was nothing like it. And I could play, too. I’m not bragging, but I was a good soccer man. I could kick and head and dribble as good as the best of ’em. And there was nothing like it when your foot caught that ball, and you heard that thud and saw the ball sail right through those goalposts, and everybody shouting and cheering and jumping up and down. But I had legs then, didn’t I?”

  He was speaking more to himself than me, and I didn’t say anything. I was having a bit of trouble pushing him anyway as the incline grew steeper, and I was slowing down and gasping a little for breath.

  He became anxious and said, “You’re going to make it, aren’t you, ’arry lad? You’re not going to fail me now. I want to get to see that park.”

  He was trying to help me by pushing on the wheels, but his hands were not strong enough to be much help. I kept at it, and fortunately his weight was not much of a handicap. I puffed and pushed and sweated, and I got to the top at last, and halted, breathing hard. We were at the spot where I had once stopped with my mother, on my way to the fancy school, and just as I had done then I turned to look down at the view that lay below us. There it was, the same as before, the same as always, a clutter of streets and endless slate roofs and chimneys, and the taller chimneys of the mills thrust upward into the clouds, and all of it seen through a film of the yellowish smoke that hung constantly over the town, its acrid smell drifting up to us.

  Freddy looked with me, and said, “That’s where we live, down there in that smoke. It’s been there all me life. It’ll always be there, I suppose. I went to war to save it. Only I couldn’t save me’self.”

  We turned, and I wheeled him into the park. It was early spring. It was a bit chilly and cloudy, but the buds were beginning to show on the trees and bushes. The grass was very green, and it had recently been cut and there was a sweet smell in the air. Freddy drank it in and sighed a bit. Birds were chattering about us.

  “Ah, but it smells good,” he said. “That’s what I came for, to smell the grass right after it had been cut, and hear the birds singing. It’s all so clean, isn’t it? There aren’t many clean places left in this dirty world of ours. I tell you something else, ’arry. It makes me think of all the girls I’ve loved here. So many of them, I can’t count ’em. I remember this
same sweet smell that used to come up from the grass when I lay with them in the darkness, and the stars shining overhead.”

  Again, it was as if he were talking more to himself than to me, and I said nothing as I pushed him along the path. The park was almost deserted. We went past a thick grove of trees, and I noticed one big golden tree that stood out among the others. He noticed it too, and he gave a little chuckle.

  “That was my favorite spot, that willow. Its branches spread out like a ladies’ ballroom costume. It’s the most beautiful thing you ever saw, and when you get inside that tree it’s almost like being in a cathedral. There’s something holy about it, I swear. It’s big and tall inside, and you feel like you’re a million miles away from everything. Trouble is, you can’t use it when summer’s over. It sheds branches as well as leaves, and it’s like somebody dying, and there’s nothing left but a skeleton. But I suppose everything’s got to end, eh, ’arry?” Then he added, “Take me back, will you, lad? I’m getting tired.”

  He sounded tired, too. He started to help me again by pushing on the wheels, this time doing so much better than before that we rolled quickly, and soon reached the entrance again and went outside to the top of the hill.

  There he made me stop, and he looked down the hill for quite some time. He seemed to be brooding over something, and I waited until he was ready to go down. Finally, when he did speak, he said rather quietly, “’arry, I want you to do something for me now. Will you?”

  “Yis,” I said.

  “Go back there into the park. I think I lost my handkerchief. Go back there and look for it, will you?”

  “Yis,” I said.

  I thought somehow it was a bit strange. I had not seen him use a handkerchief, and if he had dropped it I would have seen it. I did what he asked just the same. At least, I got as far as a few yards beyond the entrance, and then something—I don’t know what it was—something made me stop and turn around. My heart almost jumped into my throat. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing at first. Freddy was starting to maneuver his chair down the hill, pushing hard on the wheels with his hands.

  I rushed back, yelling. “Freddy, wait for me!”

  He must have heard me, but he paid no attention, and went on rolling down the hill. I ran after him, frantic, but I was too late. Once the wheelchair had gathered momentum it went faster than I could. I stopped in horror, watching. Freddy had no need now to use his hands. The chair raced down the steep incline, and just as it got to the bottom I saw the rear end tilt upward, as if one of the wheels might have struck an obstacle, and Freddy’s half-body flew out. Quite distinctly I heard a sickening thump as his head struck the ground. The chair rolled over him, and he lay there still. I remember hearing my own screams as I rushed down toward him.

  Chapter Nine

  THE HARD TIMES BEGAN AFTER THE WAR, I REMEMBER. THE CLATTERING OF clogs down the street in the early morning was no longer as loud or as brisk. Sometimes there was none. The military was no longer ordering uniforms, so trade had slowed. The tailoring shops were idled just as the mills were, and the men and the boys and girls who worked there stayed home, and the men sat outside their houses and smoked.

  With my father, however, there was little change. He came and went as he always had, sitting at the table alone for his dinner, head bent low, shoveling food into himself. Then, abruptly pushing his chair back with a scraping sound and rising to get his coat hanging on the back of the scullery door, and then charging out as always with one sleeve dangling behind him. Off to the pub. Where he got his money was his business.

  He gave none to my mother Saturday afternoon. There was none, he said, and so my mother had to struggle as best she could. Her little shop had dwindled to almost nothing. The shelves and bins were practically empty. Not having any money, she could not buy any fresh produce, and even if she did people on the street did not have money to buy. She resorted to her old method of getting new stock, crawling under Pollit’s fruit stand and foraging for half-rotted fruits and vegetables.

  I went with her often on these missions, and even crawled under the stand with her several times now that I was big, ten years old, almost eleven. I remember the smell of the half-fermented apples and oranges and the other things, and the mush that got onto my hands and face. I remember too the flushed look of triumph on my mother’s face when we were able to fill our two straw bags.

  “Oh, aren’t we lucky,” she’d say.

  Pollit took very little from her. He’d have given them to her for nothing if she’d let him, but she still wouldn’t, still too proud. He shrugged and pretended to haggle with her for the best possible price. Off we’d go then, and this time I’d be lugging the two bags for her, and saying, when she wanted to help me, “No, I can do it, Mam, I can do it by meself.”

  She was not as strong as before. She seemed to have grown heavy around the middle and walked more slowly. In the house she did not rush to answer a knock when it came at the door, even when it was the postman with a letter perhaps from America, and you did not hear the rustle of her skirt as she whirled around to go to the door. I sensed something different about her, and the way sometimes people spoke to her, dropping their voices to a whisper if I was around, something I did not understand.

  It would take a little longer before I did, a year or so more before Zalmon would take me and several other boys around the corner and into a dark entry to explain the mystery of life.

  One night I woke up to hear a baby crying. I listened, startled, thinking I was dreaming. But no, it was real, and it came from the room next to us, the one where my mother and father slept. Joe and Saul were awake, too, listening. They slept on the other end of the bed, and their feet protruded onto my end and sometimes into my face. They were whispering to each other.

  I said, “There’s a baby in Mam’s room.”

  Saul said scornfully, “Don’t you think we know it?”

  “Mam just had it,” Joe informed me.

  I was a bit taken aback. Then I asked, “How?”

  Saul screamed with laughter. Joe chuckled. He was a little more restrained, and more tolerant toward me. “How d’you think?” he said.

  “He doesn’t know,” Saul said with the same contempt.

  I didn’t then, but I didn’t ask any more questions. I simply accepted the wonder and excitement of it all. I looked at it with wide eyes the next day in my mother’s room. She was lying in bed, looking wan, suckling the baby at her breast. I had seen other women doing this before with their babies when they came into the shop. Fanny Cohen had had a new one not many weeks before. But this was the first time I had seen my mother suckling a baby. I felt strangely awkward, embarrassed, and turned my head away. My mother’s tired face took on an amused expression.

  “Don’t you like the baby?” she asked.

  “Yis.”

  “Then why don’t you look at him?”

  I turned my head slowly, and my mother may have guessed the cause of my embarrassment and put her breast away inside her nightgown. I could see the baby’s face more clearly now. It was red and wrinkled and looked as if it might be going to cry. It was making faint sounds like a clucking chicken.

  “He looks like you,” my mother said.

  “Is it a boy?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “What’s its name?”

  “We’re calling him Sidney.”

  “Why?”

  “That was the name of your father’s uncle who died a long time ago. You always call a baby after someone who died.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you do. It’s the custom.”

  “Aren’t we going to America?” I asked suddenly.

  She seemed puzzled. “Yes, of course we are,” she said. “Why not? What’s the baby got to do with it?”

  “How can you go to America with a baby?”

  “Oh, it’s easy. A baby can go just like anybody else. When he’s a bit older, of course. You’ll have to write another letter for me to America.
They’ll want to know about the baby, and, who knows, maybe that’ll help hurry them up a bit sending for us.”

  I believe she really thought that. She was always seeing people through her own eyes and seeing herself mostly and attributing to them her own gentleness and unselfishness. She was certain they would share her joy in the new baby, and feel all the more need to help her.

  I know I certainly believed it myself, and was only too anxious to start writing the letter. Perhaps I would have done so then, except that suddenly we were both aware of someone coming into the room. We both turned our heads and looked toward the door, and were startled to see my father standing there.

  His usually heavy footsteps had been quiet for once, and we had not heard him come up the stairs. He stood there looking down at the floor, his face sullen and scowling as always, not saying anything for a moment, then muttered, “How are you feeling?”

  I saw the surprise come on my mother’s face, and I felt the same thing. I had never before heard him ask this of her. Nor had she probably. She did not answer his question, but spoke to me quietly, saying, “’arry, go downstairs and play.”

  I went, somehow feeling extraordinarily happy. There was peace in our house for once, something I had never known before.

  A week later we had the bris. The guests filled our kitchen, and because there were few chairs most of them had to stand. My father had put a bottle of whiskey on the table, and poured a few small glasses, then put the cork on tightly and guarded it for the rest of the time with glaring eyes. There was also sponge cake my mother had managed to bake for the occasion in spite of her confinement. Lily was in charge.