The Credit Draper

by J David Simons

  He shook his head.

  “Do you know what Moses Cohen does?”

  “I don’t know Moses Cohen, sir.”

  “Don’t be stupid. Of course you know who Moses Cohen is. He is Madame Kahn’s brother.”

  “Uncle Mendel, sir.”

  “He’s not really your uncle. Yes, Uncle Mendel, then.”

  “He works up north somewhere. That’s all I know, sir.”

  “It’s more the north-west. Around Oban. Well, anyway, he is a credit draper.”

  “Sir?”

  Jacob Stein explained how he gave Uncle Mendel goods from his own warehouse at a wholesale price and on credit. Uncle Mendel then sold the same goods on to his West of Scotland customers at a profit, also usually on credit, on terms worked out between Uncle Mendel and the customer.

  “The trick,” Jacob Stein said, “is for Mendel to recover the price and a profit from the customer before he has to pay me. Usually within two months. Then he makes a living. That’s how we Jews help each other. Do you understand?”

  Avram nodded.

  “Mr Kahn says you are a smart boy. Good with figures?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Excellent. With the strikes at the docks, there’s not much money around Clydeside to support a credit draper. So Mr Kahn and I have agreed you should join your Uncle Mendel. You need to learn the business. When you can do that, when the strikes are over and the workers have some coins in their pockets, you can return to Glasgow and work here.”

  “I have to go to Oban, sir?”

  “Not exactly Oban. Oban is the nearest fishing village. Moses has a small cottage tucked away in the countryside somewhere. A but and ben, I believe, is the Glasgow expression for such a place. It will only be for a few weeks at a time. Every so often, one of you will come back for new samples, to fill the orders and so on. Moses needs to return anyway, to sort out his status. Do you understand?”

  Avram didn’t understand. He could make no sense of the whims of the adult world that pushed him on to ships, that took him away from the game he loved to play, that substituted his education for tramping around the Scottish countryside with his Uncle Mendel as a peddler of Jacob Stein’s wares.

  “Any questions?”

  “Do they play football there?”

  Jacob Stein smiled for the first time. “I don’t think so. Perhaps there is a small Highland league team. Shinty is the sport up there, I believe.”

  “Shinty?”

  “It’s like hockey. With bigger goalposts. That’s all I know about it. Football is the game for me.”

  “Hockey,” Avram sighed.

  “Well, cheer up. It’s not like you’re being sent to the Front. Boys your age are enlisting.” Jacob Stein held out a hand to the room. “I also started like this. A credit draper. It is a beginning. A small beginning, but a beginning nevertheless.”

  Avram followed the direction of the outstretched arm. An enormous safe as large as a linen press dominated a corner, the paint around the brass lever-handle worn to the metal. A far wall boasted a framed portrait of the warehouse owner decked out in some civic finery. Jacob Stein stood up and walked his bulky frame over to stand beneath his likeness.

  “Last year, they made me a bailie.”

  Avram flicked his eyes between the portrait and the real man. The figure in the portrait was slimmer but the painter had captured the certain smugness of his subject.

  “Bailie,” Jacob Stein said, sucking on his cigar. “I am only the second Jew to rise so far in this great city. A young man like you can be something too. With a lot of hard work and a bit of this.” Jacob Stein tapped a finger at the side of his own head.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jacob Stein snorted. “I have telegraphed your Uncle Mendel to tell him you are coming. Take some new samples with you when you leave. My secretary will show you what to do.” He stubbed out the cigar in an ashtray, waved a hand at him. “Now, go. Gie gezundheit.”

  After Avram had closed the door to Jacob Stein’s office, he saw another young boy seated next in line to go in. A red-headed lad with lanky limbs who hardly looked up to register his entrance into the passageway. It was only when he reached the cubicle housing Jacob Stein’s secretary did he remember who that boy was. The vicious winger from Victoria and Cathcart Boys’ Club. Ginger Dodds.

  Celia was waiting for him in the warehouse yard.

  “What’s in the parcel?”

  “Samples.”

  “Samples of what?”

  “I don’t know. Aprons, shirts, pullovers.”

  “What on earth for?”

  “They’re for Uncle Mendel. I’ve to become a credit draper.”

  “Stop a minute, Avram. What is going on here?”

  “I told you. I’ve to become a credit draper.”

  “Like Uncle Mendel?”

  “I’ve to go and work with Uncle Mendel. In some place near Oban.”

  “What about school?”

  “I have to leave. There is no money to continue with my education. Papa Kahn and Jacob Stein decided it. I’m like a goods train. Shunted here, there and everywhere. Now I have to go to some damned place they don’t even play football. Just bloody shinty.”

  Celia stamped her feet in the snow.

  “You can’t leave me.”

  He looked at her face, at the two familiar lines frowning her forehead between her eyes. He didn’t know whether to be glad or sad that these lines were caused in his honour. “Why not?” he asked.

  “You’re all I have.”

  “No, I’m not. You’re mother is coming back in a few days.”

  “What?”

  “I forgot. Jacob Stein told me. He just found out this morning.”

  “Mother is coming back?”

  “Yes. Under the protection of the Jewish Representative Council.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I didn’t really understand. Something about justice and fair play.”

  “Well, there wasn’t anything fair about taking her away in the first place.”

  They walked on in silence after that until eventually she hissed: “I hate Jacob Stein.”

  “So do I.”

  “Why do you hate him?”

  “Because he pushes people around. Why do you hate him?”

  “He’s always trying to kiss me. And he thinks he’s such a big shot. Ever since he was made a bailie. He’ll want a knighthood next.”

  “Jews get knighthoods?”

  “I think so. In London.”

  She tugged at his arm, directed him towards the bridge spanning the River Clyde that led them southwards out of the city.

  “Let’s walk home,” she said.

  He buttoned up his jacket to the full, then looked down to follow the path of his shoes as they negotiated the wet cobbles alongside Celia’s own petite laced-up boots.

  Twenty-one

  MADAME KAHN ARRIVED HOME with a matter-of-factness that suggested she’d just come back from Arkush’s bakery on Abbotsford Place rather than from over a year at an internment camp. But the differences between the person who had left and who had returned were substantial. First, there was her hair. Or what was left of it. No longer did Madame Kahn boast those long thick locks that Avram had witnessed hanging loose as she struck Mary with a hairbrush. In fact, Madame Kahn had no need for a hairbrush at all, for her hair had been shorn to within a farthing’s-width of her scalp. She looked much smaller too, and her skin sagged on her face in the same way that her clothes hung loose on her body. To Avram, it wasn’t as if she had just reduced in size compared to his own growth over the last year. It was as if her whole presence had diminished. She had lost her stature. There was a nervousness about her. He had seen the same look of insecurity in the eyes of the soldiers who had returned from the Front, their perception of the world shattered, their place in the new regime no longer assured.

  She shook hands with him, lightly embraced her daughter, sniffed around the hallway, ran a finger
over a table-top then disappeared into her bedroom, leaving a trail of lavender behind her.

  After a few minutes, she re-entered the kitchen, looking even paler than when she had arrived.

  “How has Papa been?” she asked Celia.

  “He is getting stronger.”

  “Good. Soup. He must have soup.” She bustled over to the range, started to lift the lids of pots. “Is there any soup?”

  “There is chicken soup, Mother. But he has just eaten.”

  “I see.” A lid clanged to the floor. She ignored it. “And Nathan? Has he eaten too?”

  “Nathan hardly eats.”

  “I see.”

  Madame Kahn flopped down into a chair, took a handkerchief from her sleeve, dabbed her eyes.

  “You can always wear a headscarf, Mother,” Celia suggested. “Or even a sheitl?”

  Madame Kahn laughed, a short almost hysterical cackle. “See. See the wonderful ways of the Lord. I go to a camp as an enemy alien and return as an Orthodox Jew wearing a wig. No, I will not wear a sheitl. A headscarf, maybe. But a sheitl made of horse-hair? Never.” Then, she seemed to calm herself. “Camps,” she said quietly. “No-one should have to endure such a thing. And, Avram, you are to work with Mendel?”

  “Yes, Madame.”

  “And when will that be?”

  “I have to go at the end of the week.”

  “I see.” Then in an unexpected display of affection, she held out her arms to Celia. “Come, daughter.”

  Celia approached hesitantly and was bundled into the bosom of her mother. “How are you, my little one? You have grown so much. You have become a beautiful young woman. And Mary? Where is Mary?”

  “She’s wringing out the laundry in the back,” Celia said from within the smother of her mother’s grasp.

  “Well, when she comes in, tell her the hall furniture needs dusting. Now, I must go and attend to Nathan.”

  Avram laid out the new stock samples on his bed. A jumper, a couple of work-shirts, a girdle and a full-length apron. He hadn’t known what the girdle was until the woman who checked out the samples served up an explanation in a thick tobacco-scratched voice that made him blush. But it was the full-length aprons that were the big sellers.

  “Why are you packing now?” Celia asked as she came into the room.

  “I don’t have anything else to do.”

  Celia picked up the girdle, held it against her body. “What do you think?”

  He glanced at her, then turned away from her coquettish pose.

  “This will be your most popular item,” she said. “They are replacing the corset all over Europe.” She smoothed the fabric against her belly and her thighs. “I’m not sure if the Oban fishwives will go for them. What do you think?”

  “Aprons are the most popular,” he muttered.

  “I think you’d rather see the young lassies in their girdles than in these long pinnies,” she teased.

  “Leave me alone.”

  She looked at him fiercely, then stomped out of the room. Within a few seconds she was back again.

  “Why can’t you be nice to me?” she complained.

  He shrugged. “I do want to be nice to you.”

  “Well, let’s go and see Mrs Carnovsky then. You promised.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, now.” She took his hand and pulled at him. “I told her we were coming.”

  He let her drag him through the flat out into the close, where she rang the bell of the door opposite.

  “Well?” Mrs Carnovsky asked through a cloud of smoke in the half-opened doorway.

  “It’s me. Celia. I said we’d come at three.”

  “Komm. Komm, bubeleh. I have made some tea. Ah, it’s you. The meshugge orphan. You can come too.”

  He followed Celia and the old woman down a narrow hallway lined with framed pictures, their subject matter indiscernible in the darkness. The living room was not much lighter, with the closed curtains holding out rare mid-afternoon winter sunshine while the gas lights remained unlit. Only an electric lamp, shrouded in a red cloth, bled any light onto a table where an unattended cigarette burned in an ashtray, and a set of tea-things sat prepared for the three of them. He pottered around the room picking up photographs and ornaments here and there while Mrs Carnovsky staggered in from the kitchen with an enormous teapot for the table.

  “So what must we do?” Celia enquired.

  Mrs Carnovsky stubbed out her cigarette in an ashtray littered with gold tips, immediately lit another one.

  “First, drink your tea. But don’t finish it all. Leave a bissele in the bottom of your cup for me to work with.”

  Avram sat quietly, sipping at the strong brew. Celia had told him all the stories. The tea-leaf images of a snake and a dagger close to the rim of poor Harold Levy’s teacup that made Mrs Carnovsky beg him not to enlist for a war from which he never returned. The picture of a man near the handle of Beatrice Arkush’s cup predicting the imminent arrival of Meyer Shapiro as a suitable husband for the baker’s daughter. The juxtaposition of the sun and a purse that encouraged Abe Abramson to give up his slipper-making business to become the very successful kosher butcher he was today. Solly told him his father had once sat with a list of horses from the next day’s racing at Ayr hidden under her table until he could match her interpretation of the random pattern of leaves to the name of one of the runners. The horse won, but when Mrs Carnovsky discovered the illicit use of her powers, she never spoke to Lucky Mo again. It was rumoured she had even put a curse on the bookie, but until now the supposed hex had no effect on the success of his business. However, Solly had reported that, since the incident, his father suffered severe attacks of gout.

  “Celia tells me you go to work with your Uncle Mendel,” the old woman said.

  Avram nodded.

  “Selling goods for that Jacob Stein,” she hissed, then turned her head to the side to emit a couple of dry spits to the floor. “Feh! Feh! to that man,” she said, then turned her attention to Celia as if nothing had happened. “Komm. Let me see.”

  She took Celia’s cup, swirled the tea-leaves around three times anti-clockwise, then in one swift movement, flipped the cup upside down in its own saucer. She waited a few seconds then ground the cup around three more times anti-clockwise until it rested with the handle pointing directly at Celia.

  “So what does the future hold for my little Celia? For my little bubeleh?” Mrs Carnovsky discarded the cloth covering the lamp, picked up the cup and began to examine the patterns close to the glow.

  “You are sure you want to know?” she asked.

  Celia giggled. “Yes, of course, I want to know.”

  Mrs Carnovsky sucked hard on her cigarette then exhaled the one word: “Sacrifice.”

  “Sacrifice,” Celia repeated. “What do you mean? Where?”

  “Here,” Mrs Carnovsky said, pointing a yellow-stained finger to the inside wall of the cup.

  Avram peered at the pattern also. “What is it?” he asked.

  “A cross.”

  He looked again. The display of leaves could have been a cross but also … “A dagger,” he said. “It could be … a dagger.”

  “A dagger is worse. It means danger,” Mrs Carnovsky said, scowling at him. “But it is a cross. Sacrifice.”

  “What kind of sacrifice?” Celia asked.

  “What kind I don’t know.”

  “Why are the leaves always miserable for me?” Celia pleaded. “Why are they always bad for me? Why can’t they be about love or success or happiness?” Her dark eyes danced nervously as she searched for an answer in Mrs Carnovsky’s stony face. “What do I do to deserve this? Why can’t I have marriage or success or good news?”

  Mrs Carnovsky shrugged. “I can’t make it good for you, bubeleh. The leaves just tell me how it is.”

  “It’s just hocus-pocus,” Avram said. “Don’t get so upset about all of this …”

  Mrs Carnovsky continued unperturbed. “… And the pattern is closer t
o the rim rather than to the bottom of the cup. That means the sacrifice is not far away.”

  “How soon?” Celia asked.

  “That I don’t know.”

  “Everyone has sacrifices to make in the future,” Avram said. “Look at me. I have to make sacrifices all the time.”

  “Sacrifices are not always a bad thing.” Mrs Carnovsky snatched at his cup, quickly repeated the same movements as she had done with Celia’s. With the handle facing menacingly at him, she snapped: “You want to know your future or not?”

  Such was the intensity of her stare that he thought she was putting a curse on him there and then. Even with the cigarette smoke passing over her face, her watery eyes refused to blink.

  “Please, Avram,” begged Celia. “Please. You said you would do it.”

  Mrs Carnovsky continued to look at him.

  “Fine. Tell me my future then.”

  The old woman picked up the cup, inspected it carefully, dipping the white bone interior in and out of the glare of the light.

  “What does it say?” he asked.

  “There is a pattern,” she said. “Very clear.”

  “What is it?”

  “It is good news. You want to know? You want to know this hocus-pocus?”

  He nodded.

  Her old eyes looked at him triumphantly. “I see a bird. You have the shape of a bird very near the rim. A bird. That is good fortune and it will come soon. Very soon. A bird.” She closed her eyes but continued to speak. “A large bird, a strange bird, the likes I never saw in my life before.”

  Madame Kahn was not interested in crosses, daggers or strange birds. Or any of Mrs Carnovsky’s antics with the tea-leaves.

  “Life in the present is hard enough,” she complained. “Who needs to worry about the future as well? Alles beshert. Everything is fate. What will be, will be. This is what I learn from the camps. What will be, will be.” She was sitting up close to the open fire, so close it was hard for Avram to believe the skin on her legs did not curl up like wood-shavings and burn from the heat. She was also knitting in a frenzy, the needles clicking and whirring before him in a blur as she fashioned woollen balaclavas for the troops in the trenches. Celia sat beside her, engaged in her own knitting task, one eye on the pattern-book provided by the Red Cross, but no match for the speedy production of her mother.