The Credit Draper

by J David Simons

  Avram wrapped an arm around Solly’s shoulder, the two of them jumped up and down screaming: “Come on the Bhoys. Come on the Bhoys.”

  “Where’s Patsy?” Avram asked breathlessly.

  “Him there. Standing right in front of yer bloody nose. And see the Hi-Hi’s goalie.” Solly pointed to the far-end of the pitch where a long, lone, figure prowled between goalposts almost invisible in the half-light. “That’s Brownlie. Scotland’s keeper.”

  But Avram only had eyes for his namesake. Patsy Gallacher stood stomping eagerly by the touchline in his green and white hooped jersey, hands on hips. He seemed smaller, younger and skinnier than the other players with wide ears and hair that sat stiff on his head like a flat, black cap. He didn’t move for the ball but waited for the game to come to him. Boys closest to him were calling out to him but he just flicked a shy wave back at them as he kept his attention on what was happening on the pitch.

  “Hey, Patsy,” Avram shouted, his excitement and the noise of the crowd giving him the courage to call out. “I’m called Patsy too.”

  “Shut yer gob,” said Solly.

  But Avram persisted. “Hey, I’m Patsy too.” Some boys laughed, but Patsy Gallacher turned round. With hardly a pause, he seemed to pick out the source of the comment, looked directly at Avram, and smiled. Avram felt the heat rush to his cheeks. All he could do was raise his hand weakly in vague acknowledgement. Then there was a call to the player from the pitch, the leather ball thunked at Gallacher’s feet and he was off jinking his way to the Hi-Hi’s goal.

  A huge roar lifted Avram out of his blessed daze.

  “What happened?” he asked an hysterical Solly.

  “Yer hero scored. That’s what. A fuckin’ beauty.”

  Patsy Gallacher strode back to the centre spot, shyly accepting the handshakes of his team-mates. Avram joined in as the crowd around the ground chanted his name.

  “I want to play for Celtic,” Avram said. The final whistle had gone, he was following Solly out of the exits, still wrapped up in the glorious excitement of seeing Patsy Gallacher play. Celtic had won four-nil.

  “Aye. And so does half of Glasgow. The Catholic half.”

  “I mean it.”

  “Just ’cos Patsy gave you the wink.”

  “It’s not that. I really believe …”

  A hand pawed at Avram’s shoulder bringing him to a halt. A red pock-marked face leered over him.

  “Whaur’s yer colours, boy?” the man snarled at him with a blast of whisky breath.

  He tried to shake away but the grip held firm.

  “He disnae have any colours,” Solly answered.

  “Ah’m no taukin’ tae you. Ah’m askin’ yer pal here.”

  “He disnae understand.”

  The man raised an arm at Solly as if to whip him. “Ah said Ah’m no taukin’ to youse.” Then he took an end of his green and white scarf, shoved it so close to Avram’s face he could smell the damp of the wool. “Ah’ll ask ye agin. Are ye a Fenian or are ye a Proddie bastard?”

  Avram hung taut at the end of the man’s arm, staring at his bulging eyes, not knowing what to say.

  “Are ye green or blue, boy? Are ye for the Celtic or are ye a fuckin’ Proddie bastard?”

  “He’s Jewish,” Solly shouted.

  “Jewish? A Jew?” the man grunted. “A bloody Jew.” He shook Avram hard as he considered this information. Then he snorted. “Are ye a Fenian Jew or a Proddie Jew?”

  Before Avram had time to answer, Solly snatched his arm, pulled him away. “Run! Run for it!”

  Avram ducked. The man stumbled, clawed out for support then fell to the ground. A bottle broke in his pocket. Avram watched as whisky poured on to the road in an amber trickle to mingle with blood from the prostrate body.

  “Come on,” Solly shouted. “Run! Run! Run!”

  But Avram didn’t want to run. He had witnessed far greater violence than this, delivered by men far more fearsome than this pathetic drunk. Instead, he stayed, hovering above the body. He wanted to kick this man. To feel his belly cave in softly against his foot, to hear the wheeze that would issue hoarse from the man’s lungs. An act of revenge against the adult enemy, those vodka-fuelled riders who had come on skilful horseback to terrorise his village. But he had underestimated the tenacity of his opponent. A hand grabbed out from under the heap of overcoat on the ground, snared his ankle. He lost his balance, tripped over the man’s outstretched arm. He threw out his hands to break his fall, but as his head swung close to the ground, he felt a cool slash to the side of his forehead. Then large adult hands came from above pulling him to his feet.

  “Calm down, lad,” said one of those who held him. “Just calm down.”

  “He’s cut,” said another. “That drunken eejit glassed the boy.”

  Avram thrashed vainly with his feet against his captors. Tears of frustration rose in his eyes.

  “Fuckin’ Proddie Jew boy,” the drunk shouted up at him.

  But Avram finally managed to wriggle free, raced away, his heart beating a tom-tom rhythm up and down his chest. He dodged through the pockets of supporters, glancing back every few paces to see if he was being followed. But the path behind him was clear. He eased off his pace until the fingers of the crowd tapered out. Solly was waiting for him at the top of the road.

  “For Christ’s sake, Patsy. What’s happened to you?”

  “What do you mean?” Avram leaned forward, hands on his thighs, his breath pumping hard in his lungs.

  “There’s blood running all over yer face.”

  Avram touched his cheek, his forehead, felt the warm stickiness on his flesh.

  Solly had a hankie out. “Dinnae worry. I havenae blowed any snot into it,” he said, dabbing away with the cloth. “Dammit. It’s deep. And the blood’s no stopping. Why d’ye no skedaddle when I telt ye?”

  “I am fine. It not hurt.”

  “Yer no fine, ye daft bampot. I’ll have to take you to the Infirmary.”

  “Infirmary?”

  “Aye. The Vicky. The Victoria. A hospital, ye stupid bugger.”

  “I don’t want a hospital.”

  “Yer going to need someone to stitch that. Ye’ve got a cut there as deep as the bloody Clyde. It’ll no heal by itself.”

  “I need to go for the cholent.”

  “Forget the fuckin’ cholent. Madame Kahn’s going to kill us anyway. I’m taking ye to the Vicky. It’s no far.”

  Avram sat on a bench in the small waiting room, opposite a large set of brass balance scales and a cupboard full of medicine jars. The place stunk of carbolic. He had managed to staunch the bleeding with Solly’s handkerchief which was now totally dyed red. Solly paced the floor like an expectant father as he plotted the story to be told to Madame Kahn.

  “Ye just fell on some glass,” he said. “Yes. That would be the easiest. We were walkin’ down Albert Drive easy as ye like, chattin’ away about yer bar mitzvah next week and yer feet slipped on something, down ye went, a piece of glass on the cobbles, and there ye have it. Immediately I understand the seriousness of the injury, I cart ye off to the Vicky. Solly Green. Hero of the hour. So now it’s yer turn, Patsy. Repeat the story. The way ye’ll tell it to Madame Kahn. Which street were we walkin’ along’?”

  Before Avram had a chance to perform his piece, a nurse called him into a side room. She was a tall, thin woman all starched-up in her uniform, full of ‘tut-tuts’ and bustling efficiency. She pulled away the handkerchief, pecked away at his wound with her darting eyes, then dabbed the cut with some stinging liquid that made him flinch. But not as much as the six stitches she sewed straight into his skin with as much care and compassion as if she were fixing a button to an old shirt. His screams could probably be heard all the way back to the Gorbals. She then made him press a gauze pack smothered in iodine over her handiwork as she wound a bandage round his head.

  Madame Kahn was waiting for them.

  “So?”

  “We were walkin’ down Albert Dr
ive …” Solly began, but a stern look from Madame Kahn made him stop.

  “Avram?” she asked.

  “I fell, Madame. Solly took me to Vicky. The Victoria.”

  “Is it serious?”

  “She sewed me six stitches.”

  “Hrrrmph. A small scar for your pains. Well, Celia and I had to go out to Arkush’s bakery in the freezing cold. We brought back the cholent ourselves.” She wriggled herself up to her full height. “You can go now, Master Green. I trust there will be no more of these adventures on a Shabbos. You, Avram, can go straight to bed.” She pointed to the doorway of the room he shared with Nathan. “I always said you would be trouble. Tzores. Tzores. Tzores.”

  But Avram didn’t care. He was glad to have this time alone to consider the impact of the day’s events on his young soul. For he no longer viewed this Glasgow as a blanket of grey mass shrouding his perception of where he lived. Beyond his previous boundaries extended a city that now had a purpose for his life and a palette of colour for his imagination. There was the red of blood and of the Hi-Hi’s strips. There was the bright amber of whisky and of goal-keeping jerseys. And there was the deep contrast between the blue and the green.

  Ten

  THE BOOKSHELVES IN PAPA KAHN’S STUDY swelled high to the ceiling, packed tight with volumes of Hebrew texts that seemed to reek of a musty holiness. Bolts of dark cloth lay on the floor among neat piles of manuscripts adorned with Aramaic or Cyrillic scripts or just simple rows of figures. Cluttered on to a small table were the religious artifacts Avram only saw on festivals and the Sabbath – a menorah, a filigree spice container, an etrog box and a pair of silver candlesticks that Madame Kahn boasted once belonged to her great-grandmother at a time when Emperor Napoleon ruled the world. And on the large mahogany desk stood an abacus with shiny ivory beads he yearned to slide along on their wires for the sweet click, click of their contact. Ensconced behind this desk sat Papa Kahn, absorbed in the book open in front of him.

  “I am here,” Avram said.

  Papa Kahn looked up from over half-moon spectacles.

  “Ah, yes. Come. Come beside me.”

  Avram went round to the other side of the desk where Papa Kahn put an arm around him, drawing him near. The fingers of Papa Kahn’s hand played with a small box on the desk. The man’s skin stretched parchment thin across the back of his hands, like the scrolls of the Torah Avram would read the following day in the synagogue.

  “It is a pity about this …” Papa Kahn’s hand drew circles in the air close to the bandages wrapping his wound. “This … this turban.”

  “Celia said she make it look better tomorrow.”

  “That would be helpful. You look like a soldier. A wounded soldier. A wounded soldier of the Torah.” Papa Kahn laughed at his own wit, then in a sterner voice. “Are you prepared?”

  Avram nodded.

  “The rabbi says he is pleased with your performance. Are you nervous?”

  “I only sleep little in the night.”

  “That is normal. What you are reading tomorrow relates to an important part of the Torah.” Avram felt himself being pulled closer. “I know it has been difficult for you,” Papa Kahn went on. “Learning subjects in English while studying for your bar mitzvah could not have been easy. But you have a young mind and young minds absorb these things more quickly. Now, for tomorrow, are you sure you truly understand the portion of the law? It is the part the Shema prayer comes from.”

  There was one phrase among all the others that had pricked at Avram’s consciousness. It was a phrase that pushed him to grapple with concepts beyond his youthful knowledge, yet intuitively he knew that these were important thoughts.

  “I don’t understand the part in the Shema where it says et adoshem elokecha tira.”

  “Et adoshem elokecha tira,” Papa Kahn repeated. “And thou shalt fear the Lord thy God. What don’t you understand?”

  “I don’t understand why God wants to frighten me.”

  Papa Kahn smiled. “Such large thoughts for such a small boy. The Shema not only says you should fear God but you should also love Him. Fear and love together make respect.”

  “But I don’t want the fear. Is love not enough?”

  Again Papa Kahn smiled. “Imagine, Avram. Imagine God is the ocean. You can love the ocean, yes? Its beauty, its horizons, its taste, its smell, its refreshing quality. This love will make you want to be near the ocean, to protect it, to honour it. But the ocean can be fearful too. It has its typhoon swells, its thunderous waves. That fear makes you want to respect the ocean. It makes you take care of strong currents. It keeps you on the right path.”

  Avram recalled his journey on the steamship to Scotland and realised he had no love for the ocean. He knew how a vessel could be tossed in its writhing belly, he knew the distance the waters could put between a boy and his mother, he knew the darkness in its depth that would be a hiding-place for his most terrible dreams. He wanted to ask how he could love such an ocean, when Papa Kahn sighed.

  “There is something else.” Papa Kahn picked up the small box, spun it slowly around in his fingers. “This is a gift,” he said, his voice drifting away. “This is a gift. From your mother.”

  Avram took the box, ran his trembling fingers over the smooth, dark amber of its casing as if it were his mother’s face he was touching. “Mother sends this?”

  “For your bar mitzvah.”

  “My mother sends this?”

  “Someone brought it a few hours ago. You were at school.”

  “I don’t understand. Who brings this box?”

  “Dmitry. That was what he told me. Dmitry. He was in a hurry. A seaman. He was between ships. He pressed the box into my hands. “Give this to the boy,” he said. “From his mother. For his thirteenth birthday.” I begged him for more information, I even offered him money, but he said he knew nothing. He left quickly.”

  “Dmitry.” Avram felt a panic rise behind his ribs, move up through his chest in a rush to beat at his ears, to threaten this new world he had carefully begun to construct. It was a world where he had no mother for she was locked away in some compartment in his heart he had chosen not to enter. Yet it seemed his mother was still there, knocking at the walls of this vault, registering her absence in this gift. She was not dead. And the ghost of her now began to stir in this compartment of memory. God had indeed looked after her, this God whom he both feared and also could learn to love.

  “There is a letter?”

  “I’m sorry, Avram. There is nothing else.” Papa Kahn kneaded his eyes behind his spectacles and then went on. “I do not know what to say to you. I am of course joyous she is alive, as you must be, but for her not to tell us what is happening, not to ask for you to … I just didn’t know what to say. You are like family to us. A son. A brother for Celia and Nathan. I just don’t know what to say.”

  Avram was barely listening to Papa Kahn. With his nail he picked at the tiny clasp on the box, prising back the lid. Sitting on a bed of blue velvet gleamed a silver thimble. He closed the door to Papa Kahn’s study behind him, walked around the hallway, cradling the box in his hand like he might do a young bird. He didn’t know where to go or what to do. His mother was alive. But it was a fact that existed somewhere else. Not here, where she might as well be dead if she did not come for him. He felt like throwing the box with its thimble away, then he changed his mind. He would show it to Celia when she came back. He wandered into the cold kitchen, sat by the table, took the thimble out of its box. It fitted neatly on his index finger.

  “They say tomorrow’s your bassmissva.” Mary stood at the doorway with a bucket in one hand, a mop in the other. “They say tomorrow ye’ll be a man. Bein’ a man’s no such a great thing.”

  “Go away.”

  “Go away, is it now. Now ye’ve got some English words on yer tongue. Now yer the Kahn’s lovely boy, ye think ye can talk to me like that.” She put down the mop and the bucket which slopped grey water on to the floor, moved towards him, for
cing him to scrape back in his chair.

  “Leave me alone.”

  “What’s that ye’ve got there? A bit of jewellery, is it? Been stealing some of Madame’s jewellery, have ye?”

  “I do not steal. It’s mine. From my mother.”

  “Now don’t ye be telling fibs to Mary. Yer mother’s dead. I’ve heard them say it. Come on, give us a look.”

  He scrambled to his feet and backed away. “She’s not dead. She’s alive. Alive.”

  “If you havenae stolen it, ye’ll want to show me then.”

  He managed to stuff the box into his pocket before she grabbed both his arms, pinned them behind his back, drove him hard across the kitchen until he was forced back against a cupboard. He tried to twist his head away from hers as she leered in close, the bandages around his stitches beginning to loosen. With both his arms trapped against his own weight, he felt her withdraw one of her own from behind his back. She grabbed his chin.

  “So, they says tomorrow yer going to be a man. Well, a man’s got to learn to kiss the girls.”

  Again he tried to wrench his head away but she held on to him firmly while her bony body kept him pinioned against the door behind him. The strength of her surprised him. He tried kicking out at her but she kept her legs well away. She pulled her mouth close to his, licked a tongue around her lips, then pressed them hard against his own. He felt her mouth moist and rough, he could taste the staleness of her breath mixed in with the taste of sweet Sabbath wine. In the darkness behind his clenched eyes, one word rose into his consciousness among all the other thoughts swirling in a panic inside his brain. He felt her pull away but she still had him pressed against the cupboard door. He sprang his eyes open, looked straight at her. Her breath heaved quickly in her chest, her green eyes glistened with excitement.