The Invisible Wall

by Harry Bernstein

  Suddenly she could not say another word. She was utterly bereft of speech and gave way completely to her tears, while the rest of us looked on helplessly, not knowing what to say or do.

  Chapter Eleven

  WELL, NOW THERE IS JUST THIS ONE MORE SUMMER TO TALK ABOUT, BECAUSE it was to be the last I was to spend in England, and at the start it did not seem very different from all the other summers before it, warm and sunny at times, rainy at other times, and all of us growing up.

  One thing I do recall in particular—the Forshaws stopped playing their gramophone for us. On those lovely evenings when everyone sat outdoors watching the sun set behind the square brick tower of the India mill, they no longer left their door open so that we could all hear the music. They kept their door closed and never sat outside.

  Everybody knew, of course. There were no secrets on our street. The women who came into my mother’s shop waited for my mother to talk to them about the thing they all knew, about my sister and Arthur Forshaw. But she never did. There was such misery on her face they all felt sorry for her, and there were often long, uncomfortable silences in the gatherings.

  I think there was a watchful air throughout the whole street. They knew on the other side, of course. The distance between us widened considerably. Suspicious eyes were cast from one side to the other, without much being said. There were other girls like my sister, who had now reached marriageable age, and boys, and parents were worried. The Harrises still had three girls not married, all of them languishing evenings in the parlor, waiting for a suitor to knock on the door.

  Mrs. Jacobs sniffed and said, “They’ll wait. My son is not good enough for them. So they’ll wait.”

  Across the street, the noises from Mrs. Turnbull’s back room grew louder. The new crop of boarders she had taken in after the war ended was not much of an improvement over the previous bunch. One of them was a little chimney sweep named Willie Cheevers, his thin, pointed rabbit’s face and hands perpetually blackened from his work. He came out of the sweets shop one Saturday night seeking trouble, a mug of beer in his hands, teeth showing in a malicious grin, feet unsteady. He tottered over to the curb, and fixed his attention on Mr. Harris, who sat beside his wife, wearing his bowler hat, reading a newspaper in the twilight, and began the mocking litany we all knew so well.

  “Eh, Ikey Moses, you vant to buy a vatch? If you vant to buy mine vatch, then buy it, and if you don’t, then take your snotty nose avay from mine vindow.”

  The boys in the back room, hearing him, roared with laughter. Mr. Turnbull, sitting behind him on the stiff-backed chair placed up against the wall, gaped blankly at his back, a thin thread of saliva hanging from his lower lip. The Harrises pretended not to hear, and Mr. Harris kept his face buried in the newspaper. The rest of us on our side also pretended not to hear.

  But Willie was bent on mischief that night, and he kept up his jeering, taunting jibes, going so far as to approach the Harrises still closer and into what might have been considered border territory. Suddenly I saw someone leap out of one of our houses. It was Zalmon, only a grown-up Zalmon, bigger than ever and burly, now a presser in one of the tailoring shops. I don’t think anyone was more startled than Willie. Zalmon seized him with both hands and lifted him off the ground as if he were a rag doll, shook him violently, then dashed him to the ground.

  It was the first time anything like this had happened on our street. Everybody watched with bated breath. Not a word was spoken by anyone. People simply watched, and all you heard during the time it happened were the faint cries of children playing at the lower end of the street. Willie said nothing. His eyes were fixed fearfully on Zalmon as he picked himself up and slunk back into the shop. Zalmon waited until he had done so, then, with a shrug of his broad shoulders, went back to his own house.

  IT CAME AT LAST. I mean, the letter from America in answer to my mother’s letter. Perhaps it came sooner than we had expected, sooner at any rate than most of the answers to her letters. I was home when the postman knocked on the door, and I ran to answer the knock, and as soon as I saw the letter I knew where it was from, and I ran into the house shouting, “It’s from America.”

  I saw my mother draw in a deep breath, and her voice shook a little. “Open it, and read it.” But then she snatched it from me and opened it herself and took out the letter and looked inside the envelope, and the disappointment that came onto her face was deep and bitter. “There is no ticket,” she muttered.

  I read it for her anyway.

  “My dear daughter-in-law,” I read, “just a few lines to let you know that we are all well and hoping to hear the same from you.”

  It was the usual polite, conventional opening, what we ourselves had written, but suddenly the tone changed, startling me as I read. “Now, what is this you write to me about your daughter wanting to marry a shaigets from across the street? Don’t you have a broom in the house? Couldn’t you take it and beat her until every bone in her body is broken? Where is the father while all this has been going on? I shouldn’t ask. I know. Never mind him. You say you want to send her to America and get her away from the shaigets, and you want me to send you a ticket for her to come here.”

  There was a new paragraph. This was a well-written letter in a fine handwriting. She could not have written it, but had doubtless dictated it to Uncle Sol, the youngest of the family, the one they always referred to proudly as the high school gradate.

  “In case you don’t know it,” I went on, “I am not the Federal Reserve Bank, nor did I bring the crown jewels with me when I left England. I don’t have a mansion and a staff of servants or a limousine to go to the grocery in. When we ride anywhere it’s on a trolley car, and we have to take our own garbage out like everybody else. You might also want to know that you are not the only one who comes to me for money. When Abe needed a new set of false teeth, guess who he came to for the money? When Morris couldn’t meet the payments on his furniture, guess again who he came to? When Barney got a rupture and needed an operation, I’ll give you another guess who he asked. And now that Dora has got herself engaged to some schlemiel who hasn’t got an extra pair of socks to his name and still she wants a big wedding in a hotel. And now you want money to send your daughter to America?”

  I paused and looked at my mother, and wished I didn’t have to read further. Her face had taken on that sad, hopeless look I had seen so often. However, I had to continue until it was all over.

  “I should say to you what I have decided to say to all the others who come to me for money from now on. Go to blazes. I have myself to look out for. But I’ve got to admit your situation is serious, and something has to be done. I know I would not like the disgrace of having a Christian in the family. For this reason I have decided to do something for you. I am going to arrange to have a steamship ticket sent to you. I will not give you the money to buy one in England because your husband would only drink it up. I will have an agent here make arrangements with an agent in Manchester. You will receive the ticket from him. But when Lily comes here she will get a job and pay me back each week until the ticket is fully paid for. And you are not to bother me again with your troubles. As I said before, I do not own the Federal Reserve.”

  But by then a cry of joy had escaped my mother, and she had thrown her hands up heavenward to give thanks to God, much like Mrs. Jacobs had once done in her shop. I remember also how she rushed to tell everybody in her shop that afternoon, and the clamor of joy that broke out among the women. How flushed and excited and almost delirious with happiness my mother was all afternoon, and how her voice shook when Lily came home and she told her the news, news she was certain would make anyone share her joy. “You’re going to America,” she said. “Just think, to America.” It would make up for everything she thought.

  But Lily said nothing. She listened in silence, said absolutely nothing, and went upstairs. I heard the slow tread of her footsteps.

  Later, my mother called up to her to come down for dinner. Lily called ba
ck, saying she wasn’t hungry. I suppose my mother was disappointed. Perhaps she’d half hoped that Lily would forget everything in the excitement of going to America, but evidently she had not. My mother’s worry increased as Lily remained silent in the days that followed. She said not a word about America, and when the topic came up she would leave the room and go upstairs.

  The ticket finally arrived, an occasion for another outburst of joy on my mother’s part. Here it was actually, the thing she had been waiting for so long, a large pink slip of paper that would give Lily passage on a steamship to Quebec, thence to Chicago by rail, together with a letter and instructions from the agent in Manchester. She showed it to Lily as soon as she came home from work that night. Her own face shining, she thrust it into Lily’s hands, made her take hold of it and look at it, feel it, stroke it, as she had done.

  “Now you’re practically on your way to America,” she exulted.

  It was the same as before, however. Silence. Lily obediently took hold of the ticket and looked at it, but said nothing. Her face was stony.

  My mother grew a little angry and impatient. “Aren’t you glad that you’re going to America?” she said. “My God, any other girl would give her right arm to be going. And you—you don’t seem to care at all.”

  Tears suddenly came to Lily’s eyes and she burst out, “I don’t want to go to America.”

  My mother looked at her aghast. Perhaps this was what she had feared all along but refused to believe. “What are you saying?” she cried. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t want to go! Why?”

  “I don’t want to go. I want to stay here.”

  “Why?” She knew, but she was asking the question just the same. “Why don’t you want to go?” And then she said angrily, “Is it because of him?”

  “Yes.” She had asked and she had got her answer. It was out now, the thing they had both been trying to avoid all these weeks. “It is because of him. I love Arthur. I want to be with him.”

  This shocked my mother, even though she had known all along. “You’re mad,” she said. “You can’t marry a goy, you know that. You’re going to America, that’s what you’re going to do.”

  “No, I’m not,” Lily cried, “I’m not going.”

  She turned and ran out of the room toward the stairs, and almost bumped into my father, who had come in unnoticed by all of us. He turned to watch Lily run out, and then turned back to my mother, and muttered, “What the bloody ’ell’s going on here?”

  He may have heard part of the argument as he was coming in through the lobby. He already knew that Lily was going to America, thanks to his mother’s assistance, and had said very little about that. But he did not know anything about the real reason for her going. My mother had never discussed it with him; nor had anyone else. But now, in her agony, she was ready to turn to anyone for help. She told him the story, and as he listened we saw his face darken. With anything else, with any other problem my mother might have had, talking with him would have been useless. He would have been completely indifferent, perhaps he would have sneered contempt. But with this it was different. I watched—we all watched—as the rage took possession of him, his face darkening even more. Then suddenly, before she was hardly done with her story, he whirled and started for the door. My mother seized hold of him, alarmed.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “I’m going to talk to the goy across the street,” he hissed. “I’m going to ask him where the bloody ’ell does he come off going with my daughter—with any Jewish girl.”

  “No,” my mother cried. “No, you mustn’t. There’ll be a fight and that’ll make it still worse.”

  “Get the bloody ’ell out of my way.”

  “No, no!”

  For once, for once in her life, she fought him, wrestled with him, and for once perhaps he gave in to her. But he was not done with it. If he could not talk to the goy, then he could talk to his daughter. He went to the foot of the stairs and called up.

  “You,” he shouted. He never called any of us by name, only in this fashion. “You, come down here.”

  Lily must have been afraid. Who wouldn’t be, summoned by that hoarse, enraged voice? She came slowly down the stairs. As soon as she reached the bottom his hand lashed out and struck her across the face. It was like the sound of a whip. Lily staggered back and put a hand to her face, but made no sound. She stood and his hand lashed out again and again. In all these years, despite his violent temper and rages, he had never struck one of us before. We watched petrified, my mother wringing her hands, letting out cries as if she were the one being struck.

  All through the entire thing Lily remained silent, and when at last it was over, she turned and ran up the stairs, and the rest of us went back into the kitchen. My father ate his dinner, not saying another word. When he was done he rushed for his coat hanging behind the scullery door, and strode out still putting it on, the door banging shut after him.

  NOW THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED were strange, for Lily remained silent as she submitted to what had to be done, to getting her photograph taken for the passport, to filling out various forms, to having clothes made for her and standing still while my mother fitted them on her. She hardly said a word to any of us, to anyone at all. She went to work in the morning and came home at night. She looked as tired as she always did. She hardly ate anything. Indeed, she looked ill. My mother worried about it, and talked about it with the women in the shop. They all reassured her. Lily would be all right once she got to America.

  That was the answer, of course, and my mother tried not to worry. Once, when Lily came home and said she could not eat, just went upstairs to lie down, my mother sent me up after her with a tray of food, some hot soup and a plate of meat and potatoes that I carried carefully up the stairs.

  I knocked on the door, and when Lily saw the tray she frowned and said, “Put it on the dresser. I’ll eat later.” She was not lying down. She was sitting on the edge of the bed and was sorting through some books that she kept in a cardboard box, her bookcase. “’arry,” she said, “I’m going to give these books to you when I leave.”

  I was delighted, of course. I’d never had any books of my own other than those I got out of the library. There was one with gold leaf on the edges. “Can I have that one, too?” I asked.

  She shook her head, smiling. “No, not that one,” she said. “I’m taking that with me.” It was the book of poems that Arthur had brought her when he came back from the war. She picked it up and fingered it a little, and then started to cry.

  I stood there awkwardly, not knowing what to say or do. Then I heard a knocking at the front door below. Footsteps in the lobby moved to answer the knock, and a few moments later my mother called up, a little excited, “Lily, you have a visitor. It’s the rabbi. He wants to see you.”

  I think it was just about a week before Lily was to leave. All sorts of people, some even from up the park, had been coming to say good-bye to her. Lily frowned at my mother’s message, and immediately called back, “I can’t see him now.”

  “Please, Lily,” my mother begged. We heard the rabbi’s voice saying apologetically that he’d come another time, and my mother saying, “No, no,” then begging Lily once more, adding, “He’s brought you something. He can go upstairs and give it to you. You don’t have to come down.”

  “All right,” Lily said, finally, reluctantly. “Let him come up then.”

  He came very quickly with light footsteps. I wanted to go, but Lily grasped my wrist and said fiercely, “No, stay here, ’arry.”

  The rabbi entered the room awkwardly, then saw me, and looked as if he wished I were not there. But he smiled and said hello to me too, and to Lily said, “I’m sorry you’re not well,”

  “It’s nothing much,” Lily said. “I’ll be all right.”

  “I hope so,” he said. “You don’t want anything to interfere with your journey, and you have a long one ahead of you.” She had not asked him to sit down, be
cause there was not even a chair in the tiny room. The only place he could have sat was on the edge of the bed next to her. I had been standing all this time. The rabbi also stood, holding a small wrapped package in his hand. “I was sorry when I heard you were leaving us for America,” he continued. “America is a wonderful country, but for selfish reasons I wished you could stay here.”

  Lily said nothing. He knew, of course, why she was being sent to America. That information would have been given him by his landlady, and perhaps a great many other people. But I doubt if Lily felt any embarrassment over it.

  “Yes, I’m very sorry,” the rabbi went on. “You and I don’t agree on a great many things, yet we have one thing in common that would eventually have overcome all our differences. We are both Jews.” He smiled.

  Lily still didn’t say anything. She was sitting with her head bent slightly toward the floor, wishing, I suppose, that he would soon leave.

  The rabbi continued still further, still smiling a little. “Although I must admit, I enjoyed our little arguments. There’s something very refreshing about a good argument over a vital issue. I sometimes get very tired of people agreeing with me all the time, and the trivial things that occupy their minds. It’s just a pity that you and I couldn’t have got to know each other a little more. There were so many things we could have talked about.”