Avram had written his mother and so had Papa Kahn, but they had received no reply. Yet he wanted to believe so much what she told him in his dreams: to believe God would look after her. That, after all, was what God did. Papa Kahn had told him this, too. How God had looked out for Joseph in Egypt, how He had guarded the Jews through the years in the Sinai, how He had even cared for the Gentile Hagar after Abraham had cast her out.
“The Almighty will look after your mother,” Papa Kahn pronounced. “And when the time is right you will go back to her.”
Avram was not totally convinced. “Why will God look after my Mama, when he didn’t look after my Papa?” he asked. “Why will God look after my Mama and not the other Jews being killed?”
“Because your mother is a good woman.”
Avram thought about this. “Was my father not a good man? And the other Jews?”
“Yes, yes, they were probably good too.”
“Then I don’t understand.”
“What you need to understand, Avram, is how hard it must have been for your mother to give you up so you wouldn’t have to join the army. Some parents cut off their son’s forefinger so he cannot fire a rifle. Others hide their sons in caves so they spend their youth living like animals. Your mother did none of these things. She gave you up in order to save you. That is what is important to remember. The unselfishness of her love for you.”
“I still don’t understand.”
Papa Kahn sighed. “Life is not for understanding.”
Avram’s favourite task took place towards the end of the Sabbath when he ran down to Arkush’s bakery with Celia to pick up the pot of cholent left to cook overnight for their Saturday dinner.
The heat scoured his face as he watched old man Arkush open the giant oven door. The smell of baking meat, carrots, butter beans and potatoes flooded his nostrils. When the baker turned his back, Celia found her mother’s pot among all the others, lifted the lid, dipped her finger into the steaming stew.
“Ours is the best,” she said.
“Not sure,” Avram replied, tasting the rich stew for himself.
“Then let’s check again,” she giggled, licking her finger.
“Yes. You are right. It is the best.”
“And who stuck their dirty fingers in the pot?”
“I did it.”
He helped her carry the pot home, careful to follow her instructions not to step on the cracks on the pavement otherwise he would grow up to look like Uncle Mendel.
“And you will look like Mrs Carnovsky.”
She laughed. “I like you. You’re much more fun than Nathan.”
Avram warmed to what he took as a compliment. Then he pondered a while on the image of Celia’s young brother. How morose and introverted the boy was. And realised that Celia’s words were not much of a compliment after all.
Once the Sabbath was over, the cholent eaten, the after-meal benedictions sung and said, Avram worked with Celia to help Madame Kahn quickly clear the table. Papa Kahn brought out the playing cards, Uncle Mendel pressed tobacco into his pipe with his thick fingers, Mrs Carnovsky arrived from across the hallway, Nathan was sent to bed.
The adults sat around the table, Celia cosied up to her Uncle Mendel, Avram found a corner where he could rest his chin and watch the cards fly across the green cloth of the playing surface. He marvelled at the blur of Madame Kahn’s skilful shuffles, the remarkable patience of the adults waiting for the deals to be completed before picking up their hands. Papa Kahn drummed the table with his fingers, Mrs Carnovsky muttered “Feh, feh,” under her breath as she sorted out her hand, Madame Kahn held her cards tight in a fan just under her nose lest the Devil himself might sneak a look, Uncle Mendel alternated between holding his pipe, holding his cards, bringing a glass of schnapps to his lips. Then came the ordered placements of the cards in trebles and runs on the table, the surprise entrance of the magical and colourful jokers, a final flourish as the last card of someone’s hand found its rightful place on the green cloth. Then shouts of “Bah! What Mazel!”, the throwing down of redundant cards into a messy confusion until the next dealer swept them up, worked them neatly into a pack, started the process all over again.
“Mere symbols of life itself the cards are,” Uncle Mendel told Avram through a cloud of pipe smoke during a break in the play. “Hearts. They represent love. Diamonds are money. Clubs are work. And spades mean health.”
“Stop filling the boy’s head with nonsense,” Madame Kahn scolded.
But Avram liked the idea. “So if I have four aces,” he dared to ask. “Does that mean everything in my life is good?”
“Four kings are better,” Celia insisted.
“No, my little piece of herring,” Uncle Mendel said. “Avram is right. Aces are high not low. So, four aces give you the very best life has to offer.”
“Nu, Mendel,” Papa Kahn prodded. “It’s your deal.”
Uncle Mendel bent down to Avram’s level. His breath flowed with the sweetness of the schnapps. “Just make sure you’re never low in hearts, boychik,” he whispered. “Never be low in hearts.”
Five
IN HIS JEWISH UNIVERSE THAT was the ghetto of the Gorbals, Avram found it was not difficult to survive day-to-day on a mixture of Russian and Yiddish. There were synagogues, Jewish shops, Jewish warehouses, kosher butchers and even a kosher restaurant. But Papa Kahn insisted he must learn English.
“And who will teach him?” Madame Kahn asked, with a sharp glance at Avram sitting across from her at the dining-room table. Avram knew just to remain quiet and listen to the almost incomprehensible discussion, until some other aspect of his future had been decided. For that was what adults did – they came to take him to their armies, they pushed him onto boats, they sent him here and there.
“I can help him with mathematics,” said Papa Kahn. “But he will need a tutor for English.”
“What?” exclaimed Madame Kahn. “We have no money to do this.”
“He will need English to go to school,” Papa Kahn insisted. “We must educate the boy.”
“We are not a charity.”
“This is not charity. This is a responsibility.”
“For you, maybe. I know nothing of this Rachel Escovitz and her problems.”
“Oh, Martha, Martha,” Papa Kahn said in a more conciliatory tone. “You were an immigrant once, too. You know how it feels.”
Madame Kahn appeared to soften. “And how will you pay for this tutor?”
“I will barter for it. I know someone who was a schoolteacher from der heim. He speaks better English now than Asquith himself. I’m sure he would be happy with a nice, tailored suit.”
“You are clothing half the Gorbals for nothing already.”
“His education is essential. The boy seems to be quite bright.”
“And what about his bar mitzvah? He is twelve years old already.”
“Let Rabbi Lieberman tutor him. That is his job, after all.”
“And that will be another free suit.”
Papa Kahn drew him in close as they pondered the figures on the page. Avram could smell the man’s hair oil, the balm used to soothe the skin after shaving. He could see the early evening stubble just beginning to appear on Papa Kahn’s cheeks above the trim of his beard and he would rub his own smooth chin, wondering when the evidence of his manhood would begin to show. Standing like this, in the hollow of Papa Kahn’s arm and shoulder, he felt protected, shielded from the harshness and complexities of the outside world.
“Appreciate the purity and simplicity of numbers,” Papa Kahn told him. “Recognise the way these numbers fit together in your head, providing meaning where ordinarily chaos reigns.”
Avram could almost feel the figures settle perfectly into little slots inside his brain until they displayed the undeniably correct solutions he sought.
Papa Kahn went on: “Consider the contribution numbers make to the value of currency, weight, height, distance, space and time. Consider the cosmic possi
bilities presented by their square roots, their prime and their common factors. But most of all, love their truth, the way they balance out, the way they never lie.”
“Numbers never lie,” Avram repeated softly to himself. He understood the concept, not only in his brain but in some deeper part of himself. As if a truth he had always known had been uncovered.
Avram took his bar mitzvah lessons in a dank, dim room annexed to the main synagogue building where grim portraits of community elders watched over his progress. There he spoke in Yiddish, read in Hebrew and struggled to sing the bar mitzvah portion according to the various ancient esoteric symbols of musical notation taught by Rabbi Lieberman. They worked until it was so dark Avram couldn’t read the words before him and the rabbi was forced to put a flame to the gas mantles on the wall.
The rabbi sipped from a glass of black tea with lemon prepared by Mrs Carnovsky. She would wander in and out of the room during the lesson, wiping and dusting, all the time chain-smoking cigarettes rolled with pastel coloured papers and gold tips. She offered Avram no tea, but eyed him with such a curious stare that he was sure she was trying to put a curse on him. It was a fear placed in his mind by Celia, who told him Mrs Carnovsky was known around the Gorbals for her powers of prophecy and her expert reading of tea-leaves.
Along with his tea, the rabbi ate home-made strudel from a large tin adorned with a picture of Queen Victoria on the lid. Occasionally, the rabbi gave Avram some cake on merit but for the most part the sweet pastry and raisins found its way solely to the rabbi’s mouth.
“Now your bar mitzvah text pertains to the section of Deuteronomy known as ‘Va-etchanan’,” the rabbi explained through a mouthful of strudel. “Say it. Go on. Say it.”
“Va-etchenan.”
“And what does that mean? Va-etchenan?”
Avram shrugged.
The rabbi pointed a finger in the air, as if to the heavens. “And I besought,” he translated in a spray of crumbs onto his beard and the table. “It means ‘and I besought’. So called, Avram, because the chapter begins with Moses begging God for a favour.” The rabbi used the sleeve of his robe to wipe away the flecks of pastry from the open pages of the Pentateuch and the relevant Haftorah. “Besought. Beseeching. Moses beseeching, Moses begging, Moses down on his knees pleading for God in His mercy to allow him to cross over to the good land across the Jordan. To the Land of Canaan. The Holy Land. The Land of Israel. And how did God respond to this request? Nu? Come on. Tell me. Quick. Quick.” Avram relaxed, for he knew he must possess the right answer.
“God agreed.”
“And why did God agree?”
“Because Moses was such a great man. He led the Children of Israel out of Egypt. He gave them the Ten Commandments.”
Rabbi Lieberman wagged his finger. “Where did you learn such nonsense? Na, na, na, na. Moses was forbidden from entering the Promised Land.”
“But why?”
“As punishment for striking the rock in anger in The Wilderness of Zin.”
Avram was shocked. How could Moses not be allowed into the Land of Canaan? How could that poor man be left sitting on top of Mount Pisgah watching the bedraggled Israelites crossing into the Promised Land, this land of rivers and palm trees after so many parched and dusty years in the desert? How did Moses feel then in his one hundred and twenty years? Was he bitter in the same way as Papa Kahn was bitter about quotas? Was he envious of his people? Did he still love his God?
The rabbi picked out another piece of strudel from the cake tin and continued. “But the real importance here with your bar mitzvah portion is in the reiteration of the Ten Commandments. And the confirmation of the oneness of God through the Shema prayer. Hear, O Israel. The Lord our God. The Lord is One.” Again the rabbi pointed, but this time the finger was directed at Avram. “The Jews. We are a people of the law who both love and fear our God.”
The rabbi’s final words troubled Avram deeply. As did the plight of Moses. The unfairness of God’s refusal to allow the great man into the Promised Land disrupted his burgeoning understanding about the rationality of the world around him. The world of numbers, where everything was supposed to fit so neatly together. It also affected his relationship with his God, who up until now had been a watchful and protective one. A God that would look after his mother as He had Joseph and Hagar. Now this God was also a God to be feared. After all, what kind of God was this who could deny admission into the Holy Land to a stumbling, reluctant lawgiver who had taken on the might of the great Pharaoh, who had spent forty years leading his people in the Wilderness, who had commanded plagues to descend, seas to open and bushes to burn? If God treated His servant so harshly, what chance did Avram have in this world? He had no history of great deeds behind him and in his twelve years, he was sure he had done much more to provoke God than merely striking a rock in anger. Had he given his mother enough honour? Had he taken the Lord’s name in vain? Had he observed the Sabbath day and kept it holy? Had he coveted Celia and Nathan’s toys? Had he not wanted to steal some of the rabbi’s strudel? Had all his food been kosher enough? Had he not wanted to lash out in anger? Not just at a stupid rock, but at another human being? He promised himself from this day on he would never be angry with anyone again. Not with his mother. Not with Celia. Not even with Mary.
For Mary still tormented him. She came to the household daily, slinking around in the shadows, scrubbing and dusting, helping Madame Kahn in the kitchen, taking the dirty laundry down to the ‘steamie’. He often found himself alone with her in the same room, his exit blocked. She would approach then, drawing her face up near to his own, as she had done on the night of his arrival, never touching him now, but bringing her fingers so close to his cheek that he could almost feel his skin being snatched and twisted between her knuckles. He would back away from her until a wall, or the kitchen pulley or a piece of furniture gave him no escape and he was left to endure her muttering scrutiny of his features.
“Madame tells me ye’ll be thrown out by end of week,” she often told him. “Ye’ll have nowhere to go but the backlands. The backlands. Back to where ye belong.”
He wanted to fight back. To grab her scrawny neck, shake her, drag her across the kitchen by her red hair until she screamed surrender. He was almost sure he had the strength to take her. But God might be watching him, monitoring his behaviour, waiting for that one moment of weakness, the flash of anger that would prevent him from entering the Promised Land, that would get him sent to the backlands instead.
For the backlands was Mary’s version of hell. And he knew what she was talking about. He was aware the Kahn’s flat was a luxury compared to other places he had seen. Here there were three bedrooms, a large lounge room with a triple-bay window looking out on to the street, the kitchen was big enough to host a table around which the children could eat. Papa Kahn even had a study. But Celia had shown him tenements at the end of the street where whole families were crowded into single rooms.
“Come, come,” she said, sneaking off in front of him into the dark close of one of these buildings.
“This place stinks,” he said, but followed her nevertheless.
They emerged into the rear yard of the tenement – the backlands. Celia crossed the drying green, entered the open door of a dilapidated outhouse. Again he followed her. There was no window, the place stunk of urine, empty bottles littered the straw floor. Poking out from under a blanket – it wasn’t even that, just a piece of rough sackcloth – he could make out the dirty faces of three children, much younger than himself. Celia began to cry.
“Avram. Give me something. Quick. Quick.”
“Give you what?”
“A farthing. A morsel of food.”
“Me? I’ve got nothing. You give them something.”
“What? I’ve nothing either. Wait.” She lifted her arms, undid the ribbon tying up her hair. “Here,” she said, holding out the thin fabric. “Take this.” A skinny arm snaked out from under the cloth, snatched at the ribbon. Cel
ia turned back to look at him. “They live like animals,” she said, continuing to sob. “It’s not right. It’s just not right.”
“Come,” he said, gently taking her hand, feeling her warm fingers quickly lock into his own. “We should go.”
Sometimes, Avram would awake in the middle of the night to the sound of a window rattling, the creak of a door or the clang of the ash-cans being emptied, convinced that in the darkness he could see Mary’s shadow approaching, ready to pounce and drag him off to the backlands. But even then, in these moments of his greatest fear of her, he remembered the fate of Moses the Lawgiver. He would clench his fists and whisper into his pillow: “I will not be angry with her,” until he fell back into restless sleep.
His only respite came at weekends when Mary had the Sabbath and Sunday off. Her last job on a Friday afternoon was washing the entranceway to the close and when she had finished and departed for the weekend, Madame Kahn gave both him and Celia blocks of pipe-clay to decorate the passageway. Together they tried to outdraw each other with elaborate patterns on the steps and the sides of the close to welcome Papa Kahn on his return from work.
“Which steps are nicer?” Celia would always demand of her father.
“This week I think your steps are nicer. But last week I remember Avram’s designs were very good too.”
Six
THE SILVER-PLATED THIMBLE WINKED at Avram from under an armchair in the lounge. He dropped down on to his knees, picked it up, tried the tiny cup on each of his fingers. As he settled it snugly on his thumb, he remembered how he had once done the same with a thimble of his mother’s. The memory surprised him as it had been some time since he had thought of her. But that was how it was with her, suddenly these details popping up like little dybbuks at his shoulder, catching him off-guard, forcing the images of her to come flooding back, reminding him of the hole in his life where her love should have been. He pushed the thimble down on his thumb, began twisting it at an angle until it raised a welt on his skin. It wasn’t enough. He wanted to pierce his flesh, see and smell his blood, but the edges were too rounded to produce the cut.
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