‘Don’t you tell me what to do and what not to do!’ Nathan snapped, his face darkening with the sudden urge of anger that rose in him. ‘I'm your older brother, remember? Don’t you go telling me.’
‘All right, all right, I'm sorry.’ Prudently Alex lapsed completely into Yiddish. ‘You’ve had a bad time, Nathan, and I sympathize, I really do. It’s a sin and a crime, that’s what it is and Reuben, Reuben ought to be horsewhipped, I tell you. I’d do it myself, only it’d be a waste of time. He’s so bone hard selfish it’d make no difference to him and so bone hard stupid he wouldn’t even hurt.
Nathan grunted, a little mollified, but still ill at ease. To see this seventeen year old looking so changed, so old, so alien, depressed him.
‘So how come you live with him?’
‘On account I'm not stupid,’ Alex said promptly and grinned at Curly who had brought him another bagel. ‘Hey, Curly? Me, I'm stupid, am I?’
Curly sniffed unappetizingly. ‘You're stupid like I'm Lord Rosebery. You owe me fourpence ha'penny.’
‘So I'll pay, I'll pay! Did ever not pay. We're not finished yet. Eat Nathan, eat already. Then you eat more. Bring him another bagel, Curly.’
Nathan began to eat, unable any longer to resist the golden crispness staring up at him from the plate, but he chewed with a certain ferocity, anger still filling him.
‘Listen, Nathan, I can understand how it is with you.’ Alex leaned forwards over the wooden table, his elbows spread wide. ‘You go off to the army - and I'll never forget the way you looked that morning you went away, so sad and sorry. You go off and do that for the old ones, and Reuben he does nothing. Gornisht mit gornisht. They lose everything, the shlemeil that Poppa is. I mean no disrespect, Nathan, so don’t look at me that way! it’s true, it’s got to be said, ain’t it? The old man was a shlemeil. I told him when I saw him with that man at the docks, I told him nothing but trouble will come. I could see the man was a gonif, a real thief, but Poppa, will he listen? Never does he listen to anyone, you know that. So the gonif took us for every penny we got, and we arrive in London broke. Finished. Ruined. Momma and Poppa and two kids and not a rouble, not a kopek, not a pfennig, not a farthing. And Reuben, he’s the one in charge all of a sudden, the gunsa macher, the big one, who does it all. How can we argue?’
‘I hate him. I'll give him a hiding. I'll … ‘ Nathan’s voice was low, because however justified anger might be, to threaten to harm your own brother was a wicked thing to do. But the anger in him seethed and he swallowed his mouthful of bagel, pushing the rage back down.
‘Much good that'll do you!’ Alex leaned back in his seat, grinning. ‘Be like me, Nate clever! Use him, don’t hate him! Momma and Poppa'll be all right, believe me.’
‘In that place?’ Nathan flared ay him. ‘Living in that disgusting place with Poppa walking the streets with a tray on his belly with that rubbish he tries to sell! That by you is as all right?’
‘No,’ Alex said calmly. ‘Not all right. Not now. But I said they will be. I'll take care of them.’
‘You?’ Nathan managed a sneering laugh. ‘You, seventeen years old, and already he’s going to run the world … ‘ But he couldn’t look at his young brother, all the same. That jacket must have cost a lot of money and the boy looked so well fed compared with everyone else he saw in these teeming Whitechapel streets. Maybe he could at that.
Now, just you listen to me, Nate, and you won’t go wrong, believe me.’ Alex leaned forward in the confidential way that Nathan was beginning to realize had become characteristic of him. ‘Move in with Reuben. He’s got a whole house, for God’s sake! A whole house, and there’s only him and Minnie and four little kids. He’s got space for Benjamin and me, he'll find space for you too. He can’t refuse. And he can afford it, believe me. He’s got, that man, I tell you. He’s been here four years already. He’s established! Anyway,’ Alex leaned back again, folding his arms almost triumphantly. ‘What else are you going to do? Have you got money to pay rent to strangers?’
Nathan had to admit he had not. Alex had been tactful enough to say nothing about the way he had been robbed, but he knew his young brother was aware of how stupid he had been, and that rankled too. Altogether he found little to be glad of in finding this particular member of his family again.
‘How come you're so … ‘ Nathan gestured awkwardly, a movement that took in the gleaming hair, the round cheeks the air of satisfaction with which Alex was clothed.
‘You like it?’ Alex straightened the lapels of his jacket and squared his heavy shoulders slightly. ‘Nice bit o' shmutter, hey? Worked it off.’
‘Worked it off?’
‘Sure! There’s a mate of mine got a stall down the Lane - I spiel a bit for him Sunday mornings, see? So I said to him when I saw this jacket come in, hardly worn. I said to Moishe, I'll work this morning for the jacket and a pair of shoes. Maybe I'll sell more, maybe less, you take a gamble. And Moishe, the shlemeil, he said yes!’
‘Why shlemeil?’ Nathan was confused, staring at his brother who seemed to inhabit a world different from is. ‘People get paid for their work here, don’t they?’
‘Listen, Nate. The Way it is, I sell on commission, see? What I sell for him, I get a few pennies on the deal. Right, that means I have a good morning I get paid more money that if I have not such a good morning. A bad one, I never have, See?’
Nathan shook his head. ‘No.’
Alex sighed, like a mother trying to teach a recalcitrant child. ‘Listen,’ he said patiently. ‘I sell good that morning - but I say to customers, come back next Sunday, then you get the garment a few pence cheaper, my life you do. I'll hold it for you. So, they put their markers on the garments, they go away, and I still get my jacket and my shoes even though I haven’t sold quite so much this Sunday. Then the Sunday after the customer come back, I have a marvellous morning, and get the cash commission. You see?’
Nathan shook his head. ‘I thought you said Moishe was your friend?’
Alex laughed, indulgently. ‘Sure he’s my friend. And he’d screw the tochus off me for farthing. I should worry about him! Believe me, he does well with me, and he knows it. No one sells like me, no one.’
He looked thoughtfully at Nathan and then sighed again. ‘Nathan, you were always a bit of a fool, you know that? A fool to yourself. There’s a whole big world out there waiting to do you - unless you do ‘em first. When we was kids I used to watch you, always the good one, always the one who fetched and carried for Momma, helped the neighbours and got nothing for your trouble. You still do it. Reuben never did, but you …
‘ Reuben!’ Nathan’s face darkened again. ‘He was always too busy to do anything for anybody.’
‘And so was I! Benjamin you can’t count - he was like now, always with his nose in a book - but you never noticed that I could have been like you, but wasn’t! Where d'you suppose I was all the time you were so busy with Momma and all?’
Nathan frowned. ‘I never thought,’ he said uncertainly. "I always supposed - cheder school … ’
Alex laughed. ‘Sometimes, sure, often enough so the rabbi wouldn’t complain to the family I was a truant. But whenever I could, I was doing other things. A bit here, a bit there. By the time we left Lublin, I had seven roubles tied in my shirt tail.’
‘How much?’ Nathan said, his eyes widening. ‘You had … but you said Momma and Poppa were robbed, had no money. How come you didn’t give it to them?’
Alex shook his head. ‘Believe me, I thought about it. Then I thought, I give them my seven roubles, we lose the lot, the way we lost the rest of the insurance money. Better I say nothing, see what Reuben does. So Reuben had to do, and I kept my roubles. Not that it helped all that much, I didn’t get as much in pounds as I should have for ‘em. I'll tell you that now. The bastards cheated me - but I learned. Now I got a few bob put away, invested.’
‘How do you mean, invested?’
Alex looked cautious for the first time. So far he had had a boastfu
l air about him but now he seemed to be in a little doubt. He looked at Nathan for a long moment and then, seeming to approve of what he saw, once more leaned forwards.
‘I got an interest in a coffee stall. Outside the Yiddish theatre in Whitechapel Road, every night it’s there, except Friday and Monday. After I finished the show, I come out, take a cup of coffee the people see me, they want to be close to the performers, they buy coffee too! The man I got running it doesn’t rob me more'n I can stand - a man’s entitled to make his way, after all. If it goes on going as good as it is, I reckon I'll get another stall, put it down in the Commercial Road, near the hall where the boxing matches are. Then maybe another for the working men’s club down by Leman Street. The card-players there, they like a little nosh. I tell you there’s a lot I can do once I get enough money to buy more stalls. I'm telling you this, Nathan, in confidence, you understand. If Reuben finds out, he tells me to go find my own place. But it doesn’t suit me to find my own place, not yet. It’s noisy at Reuben’s, with those bloody kids bawling and Reuben shouting and throwing himself around the way he does, but it suits me. I want to put every penny I got into my own affairs, you see? Now, listen, Nathan. Come in with me. I’d rather employ my own brother than some stranger. Come with me, work the stall and together we'll make a fortune, you'll see. Just you follow our little Alex, and we'll make a fortune.’
Nathan shook his head, bewildered. There was too much going on for him to get hold of properly; his father and mother living in dire poverty and yet one brother renting a whole house in this busy city, and another talking this way of his own business? It was more than he could grasp.
‘Momma told me you were working in the theatre. She said that was why you never able to come to see her evenings. How come you're talking about coffee stalls?’
Alex shook his head. ‘You don’t listen, Nate. Sure I work in the theatre. You come tonight, you'll see. Bit of singing, bit of dancing, a few jokes, they love it! But that doesn’t take a man all day, for God’s sake! From seven o'clock till ten o'clock, I'm on stage, or near enough on it. What should I do the rest of the time? Gamble the few bob they give me? I should be so stupid! No, Nate, the rest of the time I got affairs to deal with. The coffee stall, the Lane with Moishe on a Sunday morning, believe me, it’s the best market for miles around, the best. I got a fighter I'm training - Danny - on Sunday afternoons, the occasional fight Monday night - when I don’t go to the theatre.’
‘Fight?’
‘I'm a partner with a man, a promoter. Fight promoter - People like to see a bit of skill, you know? There’s some big fast boys here, these days. Got ourselves a couple of Dutch Jewish boys, their families been here twenty years maybe, more even, and they got some real muscle on ‘em. So my partner sets up fights with a purse for the pair of ‘em, and a percentage to the house - that’s us - and we make a few bob. Nothing big, you understand, but why not if there’s a profit to be made? That’s the point, you see, Nathan! You got to look at all the opportunities, do what you can. A bissel here, a bissel there - the little bits they all add up. Another few months, I get a house of my own. I move Momma and Poppa in, and they're all right. Poppa can stop his peddling, take life easy a bit, and Reuben can go crawl up his own tochus.’
Nathan finished is coffee, now almost cold, and tried to organize it all in his head. He had paid so little attention to Alex at home in Lublin. He had been the baby, the young one, who would pay attention to him? Certainly not his older brother, so busy with his own life. The boy had slipped in and out of the house, quiet, unobstructive, what did Nathan know of him? And now this; he sounded like a whirlwind of activity. Could it all be true? Was he just making it all up as he went along? A boys fantasy?
Nathan looked at the jacket and the gleaming hair and round face and knew it was true.
‘So come work for me, Hey, Nathan? I'll see you're all right. I'll look after you.’
It was an unfortunate choice of words. Alex meant well, very well. In his eyes his older brother was really rather a fool, though a very charming one, a lummox who went bumbling through life never seeing the opportunities that fortune dangled in front of his nose. Clever enough of course; no one else in the family spoke Russian and Polish so fluently, and certainly none could write in those languages as well as Nathan did. His gift for languages had remained with him, for even in the half dozen or so days since he had arrived in Whitechapel he had picked up some of the English words he heard around him. Yet for all Nathan’s cleverness Alex believed he was a fool. He needed looking after.
But Nathan was proud. To contemplate being looked after by his younger brother - it could not be. He pushed the empty plate away from him and said gruffly, ‘No thanks, I'm no coffee maker. That’s a woman’s job.’
Alex shrugged. He wasn’t going to waste energy on pushing a favour; he knew perfectly well that Nathan would be more a hindrance than a help in any business activity. He just didn’t see the spark that in Alex was a blazing inferno, a fire that made him determined to be rich, rich, rich. Rich enough not to care about money any more, rich enough to be the sort off gentlemen he sometimes saw at the ringside at the fights, the men of the world from the fashionable West End who found pleasure in going slumming in the East End of London.
‘It’s up to you. I can give you a job if you want one. What'll you do, if you don’t take this?’
‘I don’t know,’ Nathan said. ‘I'm thinking. I'll decide soon. I'm not moving in with Reuben - better to stay with Momma and Poppa and sleep on the floor than go to that lousy … I'll stay where I am in Antcliff Street. And I'll get a job.’
‘You a tailor? Know how to use a machine? Can you hump one of those big goose-irons? So go to work in the sweat shops, for tuppence an hour. You'll work eight in the morning till nine at night, later sometimes, in a stinking pigsty, crammed in worse than on the boat coming here, and you'll make enough to eat twice a day if you're lucky. Don’t be a bloody fool, Nathan! You aren’t the sort for that kind of work.’
‘I'm no fool, Alex! Stop talking like I'm some sort of fool! I served three years, got a medal. You can’t tell me what … ’
‘Nathan, listen to me,’ Alex said as gently as he could. ‘No one here will care about your medal. Here all they care about is can you work, can you pay your way. No one owes you a living. Nathan! Not even your family. Yeah, yeah, I know, Reuben is a bastard. He got here and set himself up nicely in business making his lousy sticks, and he’s sitting pretty on account you went in the army for him. But for God’s sake, Nathan, that’s all ancient history now. I got no time for Reuben neither, believe me. The man’s as dull as - well, I got no time. But he’s got his problems like you have. He’s got four kinds and a wife who looks like she’s pregnant again, and a business to run. He’s willing to give you a roof, food to eat, so as far as he’s concerned he’s done all that’s necessary. I think he’s a bastard, you think he’s a bastard, but who are we to say he’s wrong? If you were married, had kids, you’d be the same.’
Married, thought Nathan. Married. Bloomah. Oh, God, Bloomah.
‘I'll find work,’ he said stubbornly. ‘My sort of work. I don’t have to go to no sweat shops, I don’t have to make coffee in the street. I'll do something suitable. You think you know it all, but you don’t know everything. You’ve been here three years? So, you’ve been three years. By the time I’ve been here so long, you'll see - you'll see.’
Alex sighed. ‘Well, I hope so. Believe me, I wish you all you wish yourself. And if it don’t work out - well, let me know. I'm your brother, I'll always be your brother. I know what we owe you for what you did, even if Reuben doesn’t.’
He stood up, and revealed his excessively pointed patent leather shoes, under straight very narrow trousers in a spongebag check which looked a little uneasy in company with the much larger shepherd’s check of his jacket. He tweaked his cravat, a neatly tied black satin creation, and looked as exotic as a parrot in a sparrow’s cage as he stood there staring down at Na
than in his shabby suit, bought in Astrakhan with his army pay.
‘Remember,’ he repeated. ‘I'm always here.’
‘I'll remember,’ Nathan said, and he didn’t look up. Alex sighed and went off about his multifarious affairs leaving Nathan to stare at his empty coffee cup and try to sort out is situation.
No matter what happened he wasn’t taking anything from his younger brother. There was no need now, and there never would be. No matter what.
So he promised himself, but uneasily, feeling somewhere deep inside the truth of what Alex had said. He did have to find work, some sort of work, somehow. He couldn’t go on living in his parents' two rooms, eating food they could barely afford to but, much as he knew they wanted him there. Since his arrival years seemed to have fallen off Rivka. Even he could see that, and it made him feel worse somehow. He should have been able to make things better for them, after all they’d been through. To do for them what Reuben had so signally failed to do.
He tried not to think of Reuben with his heavy blustering manner and the look of constant anxiety on his face. He looked nearer forty than the age he was, just a year older than Nathan himself, but a man who marries when he is seventeen and then fathers a baby a year is likely to look anxious by the time he is into his twenties. That was no reason to feel sorry for him. Nathan had no right to feel sorry for him - only furious. How dare he marry and buy a house and have children, while Nathan had to join the army?
He shook his head at himself, and stood up. There was no point in thinking about Reuben or his parents or Alex, or even Benjamin, the only one of them who seemed to be happy with his lot. He was still the studious boy he had always been, still looked young and pale and bent, sitting there in the back room of Reuben’s house with his head down over the dog-eared book that was his only really personal possession, or hurrying away to the yeshiva in Weston Street to study his days away in blissful unawareness of the world outside. No point in thinking of any of them Nathan told himself, and moved towards the door, turning up his coat collar as he went. It was cold out there and the fog was coming back, curling up from the river in yellow tendrils.
The Running Years Page 18
