The Singing Fire

by Lilian Nattel

  “A shop? I’m a tailor,” he said. “What do I know from shopkeeping? My hand hurts and I need medicine.”

  “I see. Were you crippled in an accident? Yes, well, it happens too often, I’m afraid.” Mr. Zalkind motioned to his secretary. “I can give you a ticket for the infirmary.”

  “Tickets we don’t want,” Nehama snapped. “Only a loan and a shop.” She jabbed the paper with her finger.

  “I’m sorry for your troubles, Mrs. Katzellen, but women are not eligible for capital loans.” Mr. Zalkind’s face was full of pity. She wanted to smack him, and Nathan even harder. He was getting up to go as if this was all finished.

  “Listen to me, Mr. Zalkind. The shop’s for my husband that he might work. A man that works knows he’s alive.” Her heart didn’t beat this way when she came here on behalf of her neighbors. “My husband will sign the loan. Won’t you, Nathan?”

  He shrugged and nodded. “Why not? With my left hand I can make an X. You have something that wants an X, sir? I’ll make you a row of X’s.”

  “It isn’t necessary,” Mr. Zalkind said. “If you wish, I can give you a month’s receipt for medication.”

  “Tell him, Nathan.” She turned to her husband. “Do you need two hands to keep a shop? Only a pleasant manner so people like to come in. Who else tells a joke like you, Nathan?”

  “You want a joke?” he asked, his eyes empty, his voice flat as he put out his cigarette and took another from his pocket. “I’m a tailor with one hand. Did you ever hear such a good joke, sir?”

  “Perhaps I could find your wife a situation,” Mr. Zalkind offered kindly enough. Oh yes, his kindness would stand him in good stead in the next world, but in this one it gave her nothing. “In a nursery looking after children. I will vouch for her myself.”

  “Living in the lady’s house, am I right?” Nehama asked. “Then what’s to be done with my own child? And my husband, who can’t roll a cigarette?” Her voice quivered with the effort of keeping it down so the whole room shouldn’t hear her pleading.

  “There’s an asylum for orphans and there is an asylum for the infirm,” Mr. Zalkind said. “One should apply to charity when it’s warranted.”

  Everyone was looking at her. Oh yes, there was a charity for everything. But even the deserving poor were not so deserving as to warrant having their own business kept to themselves. Nathan’s face was red as he stuffed his unlit cigarette back into his pocket.

  “Thank you, sir,” she said. “I’ll die before I see my husband and my child put away.” Outside in front of the warehouse, a crate burst, and hats were blowing down the street, rolled felt hats in the new styles, trilby hats, homburgs, even fedoras. The foreman was shouting orders, but the hats blew away and his men chased them with no result except their own appearance of foolishness.

  Mortimer Street

  When the founders of the first ladies’ club lobbied municipal authorities for public lavatories, the authorities had been implacable. What did they care that a woman who shopped all day had no relief until she returned home? So the ladies had built their own resting place, and now there were clubs for every sort of woman: the Writers’ Club (editors allowed by invitation only), the Pioneer Club (where women wore tailcoats), the Empress Club (decorated with the Union Jack), the Women’s University Club, the Tea and Shopping Club, the Ladies’ County, the Ladies’ Army, and the Ladies’ International Club (opened by the sister of Miss Cohen the poetess after she made a fortune in Kettledrum Tea Rooms).

  If Emilia left her in-laws’ house and walked down their street past the square where Lord Byron was born, she came right to the Muse Club, a three-story mansion decorated with murals painted by members. Like the other clubs, the Muse was in the vicinity of the best shops and theaters. It had a dining room, tearooms, reading rooms, a lecture room, and bedrooms for suburban ladies with business in the city. It was an old club, founded in 1872 by the wives of artists who uneasily agreed that if women must have lunch then it was, at least, in a club dedicated to their muse. Men were allowed to dinner on Thursday evenings only.

  The reading room was decorated with draped silks and a fretwork arch hired from Liberty’s. The arch was set over a table, framing the mural of Urania the Heavenly, muse of astronomy, her head surrounded by stars, a celestial globe in her hand. She wore a flowing blue robe that might have come straight from Liberty’s if the ancients had been fortunate enough to have the shopping conveniences of London.

  “What I would give to have a whole day to shop,” Harriet was saying. She and Emilia sat at a round walnut table piled with art pieces made or collected by members of the club for a charity auction. Emilia had donated a paper-cut. “I do admit. It’s the one thing I miss by not having a wet nurse. I can’t be away from home for more than a few hours.” Harriet was as plump and unselfconscious as ever.

  “I’m going to wear the new gown to the auction.” Emilia’s parcels had been sent over from Liberty’s. “Wait till you see it, Harriet. The gown is burnt umber; it has no waist and falls from the shoulders. There’s a robe over it with velvet trim. I won’t wear a corset with it.”

  “Nor should you. A Liberty’s dress is never worn with a corset; it’s just too bourgeois.” Harriet’s waist had passed into oblivion with her third pregnancy. “What shall I do with this?” She picked up a lacquered ashtray.

  “It looks perfectly fine. Just wrap it.”

  “But it’s so common.”

  “Oh, then pair it with that thing.” Emilia pointed to an unidentifiable objet d’art. “I want some tea.” Each reading room had a console wired to bells in the scullery. Emilia pressed the button; two rings meant tea. Three meant scones with it.

  “How is Jacob taking your news?” Harriet asked after the maid wheeled in the tea trolley.

  “He’s very happy.” Emilia cut a length of ribbon. “Look at this! Another nail broken. My fingers are so ugly.” She spread out her hands. “I shall have to wear gloves with my gown and I have none to suit. White gloves won’t do, Harriet. They won’t do at all.”

  “It’s all right. I’ve got yellow gloves. I have to go home to nurse the baby and I’ll bring the gloves back with me before you’re finished dressing. Don’t cry.”

  “I’m not.” Emilia blew her nose into the handkerchief Harriet gave her. “Jacob doesn’t want a gentile wife anymore.”

  “He what?” Harriet paused.

  “I mean he wishes me to convert.” Emilia tied the ribbon around a framed photograph.

  “Oh, I see.” Harriet put cream and sugar in her tea, stirring with a silver spoon. “Is it difficult?”

  “Not according to Jacob. But I don’t wish to do it.” Emilia took up the photograph.

  “Why not? It’s just a ceremony.”

  “Just! I won’t be myself anymore.” The picture was in soft focus, a mother in a loose white robe, looking back at her daughter. The mother’s face was slightly blurred.

  “So? You’ll be more like me. Except that you keep kosher. Thank goodness no one is making me talk to a rabbi. I’m sure that I should fail miserably. But not you, Emilia. You’re di gitteh yokhelta.”

  “Don’t tease. I won’t have it.” The girl in the photograph was playing the piano, her hands above the keys. “I’ve been dreaming about the baby.”

  “Of course you have. And I assure you that it will have all its fingers and toes and none extra.” Harriet smiled. “I had those dreams through every one of my pregnancies.”

  “It isn’t that sort of dream,” Emilia said. “I’m nursing. Upstairs in the synagogue.”

  “And?”

  “People are pointing at me.”

  “Oh, I have just that sort of dream, too. Only I’m not even sitting in the ladies’ gallery but down among the men. That’s the sort of dream you’ll have after the conversion.” She laughed.

  Harriet had many dreams that she just had to tell Emilia, each one stranger than the one before it. So there was no need for Emilia to say anything more about herse
lf. Certainly not that the dream wasn’t about this baby. It was the other one. And while she was nursing it, she was looking down in horror, saying, But this can’t be my baby. This is a Jewish child and I am a gentile. Her mother was sitting beside her in the ladies’ gallery. She was old.

  “There. We’re all done and the table is lovely,” Harriet said. “I’d better go back and nurse the baby if I’m to be here in time for the auction. Are you staying?”

  “I might as well. Go on. I’ll finish my tea,” Emilia said.

  The reading room was quiet; a sign on the door said, “No admittance until 5:00.” There was only the sound of the piano from the next room, the murmur of voices, the occasional laugh. It had been a long time since Emilia had touched the piano in the parlor at home. Their Bloomsbury friends liked to talk and talk, and there was no call for music, thank God, though Emilia could do it as well as her mother.

  When guests came, her mother always used to play the piano. It was expected. The top of the piano was draped with a fringed scarf, and on it there were silver candlesticks on either side of a vase of flowers. The candlesticks were ornate and heavy and would make good weapons if someone needed one, more effective, Emilia thought, than charm, but it would be better still to sell them and use the money to pay for a fast horse. A gas lamp hung above the piano, but her mother would light the tall candles anyway, then seat herself gracefully, her skirt spread out over the piano bench. She always began by singing Psalm 137.

  Father would say, What a voice, my wife has missed her profession. She ought to have been in the opera. Emilia always wondered why it didn’t make her mother stop. He would stand by her while she played, leaning on the piano, disdain crawling down. Her mother’s hands would stumble, but she’d carry on. Even after she developed pain in her hands so that she couldn’t do the paper-cutting anymore, she still managed to play the accompaniment for this one song.

  The first wife did not like to play the piano. She didn’t do it well, at least so Father said, and no doubt after a few years in his house this was entirely true. But he expected her to play when they had guests; it was a wife’s duty, and she bore him no daughters to be the mistress of the house and take care of him in old age. All she gave him were sons, and sons had to be educated and set up in business; they were a constant worry. She was a disappointment to him from the day of their wedding canopy, a squirrel not a wife, scurrying out into the garden. He hated the garden. What business did she have there?

  The first Mrs. Rosenberg used to stand in the garden when it rained. She’d stand under the tree as if begging for lightning to cut them both down. Finally she’d caught her death there. She got drenched and died of pneumonia. Among her things was a book of psalms, a ribbon marking the place of her favorite one. Emilia’s mother had kept it, and she used to sing Psalm 137, looking up at her husband with an odd little smile as she seated herself gracefully, spreading her skirts over the piano bench.

  In the reading room of the Muse Club in Mortimer Street, Emilia’s hands went to her belly without her knowing it. She was singing so softly that someone watching would have thought she was talking to herself:

  By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down,

  Yes, and there we wept when we remembered Zion….

  Our captors required of us a song

  Our tormentors asked us to amuse them saying,

  Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

  How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?

  If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand wither.

  Brick Lane

  Mr. Berman stood by the entrance to his warehouse, watching the men unload cloth from a horse-drawn truck. In the same block of Brick Lane were a wig maker, a bookseller, a chemist, a glass cutter, an upholsterer, a woolens merchant, a matchmaker, a manufacturer of artificial teeth, and Schevzik’s Russian Vapour Baths. The road was wide, and over it the sky hung like the green awning of a well-to-do shop.

  Mr. Berman was known as a kind man who gave his illegitimate sons work. Nehama could see them inside the warehouse, packing boxes for shipping. His wife had to serve them tea in the afternoon because her husband was so kind. If her hand shook and she dropped a lump of sugar, did Mr. Berman slap her? Not on your life. He only stopped her from taking a bath. It wasn’t his business that she smelled so high, the women in synagogue wouldn’t sit near her. Sugar costs money, you know.

  “C’gar lights, ’ere y’ar, sir; ’apenny a box.” A man in a cap so large he seemed to have no eyes took a couple of farthings from Mr. Berman.

  Nehama waited for him to light his cigar and take a slow puff. “Mr. Berman?” she reminded him.

  “Sorry, missus. All I’ve got is trousers.” No one ever said what became of Mr. Berman’s illegitimate daughters.

  “So let it be trousers.”

  “It isn’t for you,” Mr. Berman said. “I give trousers to yokheltas.” That was the custom. Gentile women sewed trousers.

  “Who are you to say what’s for me?” Nehama asked.

  He turned to the man struggling under a bolt of cheap wool. “If you drop that in the gutter, my boy,” he said, “you’ll pay through the nose for it.”

  “So do me a favor,” Nehama said. “For Nathan’s sake. He always placed his bets with your brother.” She stepped aside for the man now balancing the bolt of wool on his head. A cart rocked on the uneven cobblestones, a bale of newspapers fell off the back. The man winced as it struck his shin.

  “Then let me tell you what’s what.” Mr. Berman took a knife from his pocket and began to trim his nails, round and pink, each of his strong fingers scrubbed clean with a brush. “It’s umbrellas you should make. Don’t pay much, but that’s what Jewish widows do.”

  “I’m not a widow,” she said.

  “As good as one,” he answered, pressing her hand as if he could touch her for free because he was used to dealing with people that needed something from him.

  “We’re starting up the workshop again,” she said.

  “You didn’t sell Nathan’s machines?” He tipped back his hat. Underneath, he was bald and freckled.

  “We can take up orders the same as we did.”

  “So, so…. Why don’t you go to Nathan’s wholesaler? Your husband never did the slop I make.”

  She’d gone to Nathan’s wholesaler last year. It hadn’t occurred to her that he wouldn’t deal with her. Another woman, maybe, but her? It was crazy. She had two sewing machines and she was as good as, no, better than some self-proclaimed tailor who’d been a rabbi in the heim. She’d learned to sew from the time she could walk. Cloth jumped from her fingers into the shape of a sleeve, a collar, a back, a lapel just by her looking at it. But the wholesaler wasn’t impressed. A woman was a plain sewer, a man a best, he said. Nathan, he should only live to be a hundred and twenty, was crippled, it shouldn’t happen to a dog. Thank God the Jewish Board of Guardians ran a soup kitchen, he said. Nehama had thanked the wholesaler for his generosity and assured him that if he had any worry about his place in the world to come, he need not, for surely there was a special hell reserved for him.

  “He didn’t offer me a good rate,” she said. He wouldn’t even look at what she’d brought to show him as samples of her work. A woman her age could pick up dog dung, “pure,” as they called it, collected to sell for tanning skins. That was what he advised her. She was too old to go on the game even to save her family. Only dreck and Berman—those were her choices.

  “Well, then. We’ll see what I can do for you. Come inside,” he said.

  Mr. Berman emptied his pockets, lining up the contents on a stack of cloth. First a bottle of milk. Then a long knife. A couple of nicely rolled fags. A packet of tobacco. A gold coin. A sheet of paper. “Dovidel!” he called to a boy with thin hair, cutting cloth on a large table at the other end of the warehouse. “That’s to be finished, I don’t care if you work all night.” Mr. Berman pointed his knife at Nehama. “I can read you like a book, Mrs. Katzellen. I can read a
nyone. That’s why I’m here and your husband is sitting at home. But never mind. I’ve got an order of coats for someone else. I’ll let you take it.” He sawed at the string around the tobacco. Though he nicked his finger, he took no notice. “A shilling a coat, I’ll give you.”

  He usually paid half again as much. “Very good,” she said.

  “Any coats not to my satisfaction and I dock you.”

  She nodded. With her as best and Minnie as plain sewer, she’d make just enough to cover the week’s rent. They would all eat as long as there was no sickness. As long as the wholesaler didn’t withhold an order one week. As long as—there were any number of contingencies. She would go mad thinking of them. She might go mad not thinking of them.

  She walked back along Brick Lane, following behind Berman’s boy and his cart full of cut pieces of the cheapest and sloppiest jackets. She paid no attention to the match girls’ factory, where girls with phossy jaw, their jawbones visible through decayed flesh, were coming out to get their gin as the whistle signaled the end of the day. She didn’t feel the warm wind that made women roll up their sleeves and hike up their skirts while children ran down to the Tower to play along the river. She didn’t see the sweatbaths and the sign that read, “Wednesday Evening for Ladies.” Where she walked it was the color of fog and the only thing visible was her fear.

  She was at the end of it. Why did God put human beings on the earth only to torture them with misery? Her husband barely moved from his bed, and she could provide nothing for her daughter, who in time would run away. How could it be otherwise when Gittel had two mothers, both of them the kind of person who runs away from an undesirable fate? Nehama could just imagine what lay in wait for her daughter, a wolf watching the girl who jumped rope, her face still and determined, the sudden smile with the gap, a grown-up eyetooth not yet descended. “Dear God in heaven, help me,” she prayed. “I can’t make a life for my daughter.”

  No one answered. That was to be expected. Does God speak to tailors? Maybe to a custom tailor in the West End, but not to a seamstress of slop in Brick Lane, walking through the dirt churned up by a cart. But a prayer didn’t cost a penny, and what else could she do even after she’d given up praying so many years ago? Nehama walked in a fog, not hearing the wheels of a streetcar, the dog tearing skin from a piece of meat, the gulls wheeling above, the factory whistle. The street was silent, for she walked in a fog, and in that silence it was possible to hear the voice of her dreams.