Basic Black with Pearls

by Helen Weinzweig

  I had been given a first-class compartment on the train. I sat opposite a fine gentleman, with delicate hands and thick dark hair. Not so young, but not too old. He was very kind, bought me coffee and a box of chocolates. As the train sped past lakes sparkling in the sun, as we left behind the magnificent Swiss Alps, I had a vision of the harsh life awaiting me in Poland — a life of poverty and the dirt and disease that go with it. I burst into tears. He asked if there was something he could do for me. I told him exactly what you have just read. He understood: he too came from a kind of ghetto, the slums of Santa Rosa in Buenos Aires, where those of Indian descent lived. He described the many hardships and tragedies he had endured. Even though he was now a wealthy importer, he had never forgotten his early life. His wife had died young. He told me about his two motherless girls. It so happened, he told me, he was looking for a European governess for his children. He offered me the position. But I cannot read or write, I confessed. You are obviously very intelligent and will learn Spanish quickly, he replied. We had been conversing in French, a working knowledge of which I had literally acquired in my sleep from Avrom’s comrades, who had often argued all night in the one room we lived in. We had arrived in Munich where Hector and I had to change trains. It took very little persuasion for me to take a train to Hamburg with him instead of going on alone to Warsaw.

  In Hamburg we had to stay overnight as our boat was not due to sail for Argentina until the next day. I had my own room in an elegant hotel called Vier Jareszeiten, where the bathroom was as large as my home in Radom. In the afternoon we took a short pleasure cruise along the Elbe River in a ship called Die Alte Liebe. Hector seemed bemused by the name, commenting that die alte liebe does not mean an old love that has faded with time and gone stale; but rather a love that belongs to one’s past; an old lost love; a first love perhaps; or an unrequited love one holds in one’s heart for the rest of one’s days. I wondered if he was trying to tell me that I reminded him of an old love in his life.

  Hector remained the perfect gentleman aboard the ocean liner. I had my own state-room. We met for meals and had many interesting conversations, describing our lives on opposite sides of the globe. Every evening we had champagne. I quickly became accustomed to the elation it brought on. Still he remained the epitome of decorum: he would see me to the cabin door and kiss my hand, murmuring, Buenas noches, señora. And while I realized that life was not a river of champagne, that once I began work with the children my meals would probably consist of stew and puddings eaten with my charges, still, aboard ship, I entered into the spirit of the voyage and savoured every moment. For the twelve nights on the high seas I went to bed happy. Not without pride I reflected that Hector must have wanted my services badly to go to so much expense and trouble. Long before our boat docked, I knew I had fallen in love with him. Perhaps, even, I dared to hope, I would be his old love renewed.

  Dear Reader, even though I subsequently mastered four languages, there are no words in any language to describe what transpired next. A taxi at the docks took us through the city. We drove along a tree-lined avenue, stopped before wrought-iron gates held open by two big men, went in along a circular drive. We drew up before a brightly lit mansion. Hector held my arm as we went up broad stone steps. Heavy, dark wooden doors swung open. I found myself in a vast marble foyer under a huge crystal chandelier. And as I stood there beside Hector, five young blonde women rushed up and hugged and kissed him, all shouting at once. Were these his little girls? And coming down the winding marble staircase was a man in a black cape, lined in red satin, then another man, and another . . . all in evening dress, with black patent pumps.

  The woman looked up from the newspaper, tears in her eyes.

  – Oh that murderer . . .

  – You think he will kill her . . . ?

  – No, no. Have you forgotten already? In Yiddish a man who kills your feelings is the same as a murderer. Isn’t that right? You murder me if you kill my feelings.

  – The death of illusion, I ventured.

  She ignored me. She continued the story.

  Dear Reader, sitting in the comfort of your home, in the bosom of your family, reading this — Dear Reader, by now you will have guessed what had befallen me. This fine gentleman, this fatherly Hector, this model of propriety, was a white slaver! Yes, he was indeed an importer — of blonde women for his brothel! And I, who had escaped one kind of slavery, was to face the worst sort of enslavement. My young body, already abused by poverty and pregnancy, was to be ravaged by strangers. Oh the irony of it all! I had freed myself from a life of servitude to one man only to be trapped by love into a life of servitude to many men. My last thought before I fell into a dead faint was of my mother. When I regained consciousness, I was in a big bed, between satin sheets, completely naked. It was a large room, with fine furniture and mirrors everywhere. I ran to the door — it was locked! I pulled aside the heavy brocade drapes — the windows were barred! Not a trace of my clothes anywhere. The cupboards held unusual things, more like theatre costumes, all manner of strange objects such as saddles and whips, syringes and stethoscopes, chains and ropes. In the days to come what would I not have given to return to the familiar miseries I had run away from. How I longed for the smell of herring and kerosene. Meanwhile, that same night, unbeknownst to me, a gypsy caravan had entered the city. They were camped on an empty lot behind Hector’s house.

  – Go on, I begged, what happened to her, did the gypsies save her?

  – That’s all, the next instalment is in a week.

  – Then I’ll never know . . .

  – So come back in a week, I didn’t mean what I said before . . .

  – I don’t know where I’ll be next week . . .

  Unlike an electric alarm, a brass bell against a door will announce not only the entrance, but also the age and disposition of a customer. I did not need to turn around to confirm that the short, crisp clang, a sound, I remembered, that rang of intimacy and demand, ushered in a child whose home was this bakery. He was a boy of about ten, soon followed by a younger boy, then a little girl of about six, each child heralded by a ring that was a clarion cry, It’s me! It’s me! It’s me! Their mother left the cash register at the first swift opening of the door, and with each child in turn removed its little coat, then accumulated the garments across her bare arm, stroked each dark head, repeating You’re wet! You’re wet! You’re wet! The children showed brave unconcern for having been caught in the rain. In order of seniority each child in turn pulled aside the maroon drape and disappeared. Their mother paused just long enough to say to me, before she too went on the other side of the curtain:

  – Come again, we’ll finish the story.

  – I may never come this way again.

  – Nobody stops you.

  – I have to go where he is, the man I love.

  – Just like her, the woman in the story.

  – Not at all, I’m free to do what I want.

  – You think so?

  Alone in the bakery, I placed my purchases on the floor beside an old refrigerator: a painful decision, for one does not give up bread willingly. (I have deduced from Coenraad’s indifference to certain domestic gestures that I have made from time to time that it goes against the grain of romantic love to bring to it the trappings of marriage. When we are together no stockings hang, no shirts drip; no water boils, no bread is buttered.)

  On Spadina again, caught in the downpour, against which I did not lower my head, crossing block after block along a route taken a hundred years ago by colonial soldiers marching to Fort York. I was not interested in this street as history. Nor were the Chinese and Portuguese and West Indians, I thought, who all about me were hurrying to take shelter. Their expressions were the same as ours when we arrived on this street: a look that was empty of the past and that suffered the present. But their eyes gleamed as if reflecting the future that was visible all about them — a future of s
turdy clothes and well-stocked stores and motor cars. Even in the rain I could see that what appeared to be new shops and buildings were only facades over the old: larger windows, bright tile, some stone work. I felt my past had not been erased, just covered over and given new names in other languages.

  Just before Dundas Street my attention was caught by a large sign across the street, Shopsy’s. Despite pangs of hunger, I could not bring myself to go inside. I kept walking, swallowing streams of saliva. In my time it had been a small delicatessen. I remembered Shopsy’s parents. They stood at the steam table from morning to night, pale and patient, wearing long white aprons, their faces moist from the steamer. They were unfailingly benign towards children. The rear of the little narrow store opened onto a corridor that led to the lobby of the Yiddish theatre and patrons could buy sandwiches, pop and candy at intermission. Once, out of curiosity, I went through Shopsy’s into a dark lobby, found the theater doors open and watched a rehearsal. No one but me, apparently, knew that the doors were kept open during rehearsals. I got to know the actors and actresses and had the honor of being sent for corned-beef sandwiches, one of which was for me as a tip. That sandwich! Elevated to Proustian heights by a Toronto poet as the “corned-beef madeleine.” From that time on, all I have to do is bite into a sandwich and I am once more in the empty dark theater, the actors come onstage and I live out again the old melodramas of incestuous love, dybbuks, white slavery, lovers parted by a cruel fate.

  More insistent than the memory of such moments of happiness was the picture of myself at the age often on these sidewalks in a cruel November rain such as this, searching for my mother. Ever since, I have been in the habit of going out in a cold rain and letting water and tears pour down my face. You would not think that a single incident could lead to an addiction, but if shock and fear are terrible enough, as it was that afternoon, then — given the same time of year, the same time of day, the same weather conditions, unable to find the one person my life depends on — then, for the rest of my days, I will seek to feel again that strange elation brought on by terror.

  I weep now as I walk along Dundas, recalling that the landlady had red hair, broad shoulders and a pug nose; that it had to do with her husband who liked to come up to our attic room and sit on the bed with my mother after supper. One day, when I got home from school, she was waiting for me on the street side of the door, and no sooner did I put a foot on the first step than she shouted down, Go away, you and your whore mother don’t live here any more! That door dominates my thoughts: I hear it slammed shut; I feel its weight against the jamb when I try to open it; I still attribute hate to a door when I find it locked against me. I wandered the streets, turning corners. It was this time of year; it was that time of day when everyone hurried indoors. I passed houses where lamps were lit and where children, I imagined, chattered and played. Soon the darkening streets became busy with fathers hurrying home from work and mothers dragging children back from somewhere. Then the streets emptied. I walked so long I came full circle. It is the law of the lost. I waited for my mother in a dark corner of the verandah. I was soaked to the skin and shivered with cold. She came home about ten o’clock and by that time my fears had turned to delirium. It was called a bad cold. For five days I lay in a fever in that dark attic room. No one came in to give me food or drink. My mother did what she could when she came home from work at night. That was on D’Arcy Street in 1935.

  Here is the Art Gallery in its new magnificence in glass and stone, taking up an entire block. Broad, shallow steps lead up from the street. I climbed them obliquely, without strain. A last backward look at the old narrow houses across the street, picturing their dark, steep stairs off the kitchen, intended for servants who were expected to continue up stairs darker and steeper still to their attic rooms. At this moment I could actually smell again the dead air of attics. I hurried into the vast, carpeted foyer of the Gallery, which fulfilled its street promise of ease and refinement. A booklet on the counter told me that this luxury was mine until five o’clock. It also told me that

  One of the most beautiful aspects of the Gallery is its first home. Built in 1817 by D’Arcy Boulton, Jr., The Grange is now restored to Georgian elegance and gives the flavour of domestic life in early Toronto around 1835.

  Downstairs, I removed my wet coat and my wet shoes, and pushed them across a wide counter towards a dispirited attendant. She handed me a numbered disc, and put its twin through the metal hook of a hanger for my coat. She hesitated at the sight of my sodden shoes, but eventually lifted them with the tips of her fingers and carried them, her arm extended, to a place under my coat. I took note of signs pointing to washroom and cafeteria, smoothed my black dress, fingered my pearls to check the clasp and set out to lose myself in silent rooms. I would stay here until my shoes dried, if not entirely, at least enough to take me to Elm Street later. At the prospect of having to locate, perhaps, ten or more streets called Elm, I felt a rising anger towards Coenraad for not having been at the first Elm; for the ambiguity of the botanical message; for causing me to return to this city to suffer the blows of memory. Even were I to find him in my bed at the hotel tonight, I was in no mood to be with my lover. Right now I was not the spirited, attractive woman he knows and wants.

  Upstairs, people were moving through a turnstile with a speed unusual for gallery goers. They lost no time in getting to an area to the right and disappearing through an entrance marked Restaurant. When I reached the turnstile, the young woman towards whom plastic cards were being held up, addressed me with an urgent Here you are! You’ll have to hurry, the awards are about to begin! Something in my gait caught her attention. She looked down at my stockinged feet. Was she concerned that I was about to receive an honor of some sort without shoes on? Had she said anything, I would have assured her that there was no reason for me to receive an award, unless it were for blind persistence.

  With the others I moved towards the restaurant. At the sound of the amplified cadences of a prepared speech, I hung back, jostled by those whose course I was obstructing. I was hungry, yet the idea of being hectored before I got something to eat made me decide to leave the line and swerve sharply to my left. I found myself going down one of the corridors of the old Grange, into the first of the familiar galleries that have black marble archways, with gold letters of the benefactors’ names overhead. Shoeless on the original pine floors, I went from canvas to canvas. They depicted worlds as remote to me today as they had been thirty years ago: blissful madonnas and suffering Christs; gloomy fields and bucolic herdsmen; nymphs and satyrs; sombre Flemish portraits, dark, dark, dark, relieved only by the white of ruffs at neck and wrist. Now, as I did then, I sought the flamboyant Marchesa Casati by Augustus John. I came upon her as upon a long-lost friend. There she was still, her dyed carrot-red hair, those dark wild eyes meeting mine, her two hands on one hip. At twelve I had hoped to grow up to become like her — independent, dramatic, seductive. I am not even close to that image — I am short, diffident, and my eyes are small, hazel, with invisible lashes. I never know what to do with my hands when I am not working. Now, as then, I thought her to be much more enticing than the overripe, rose-tinted virgins idealized by their painters.

  If I knew how to paint I would carry a sketch pad. I would record sights that leave a deep impression — a mother gazing down tenderly on a mongoloid child at her breast; a legless man on his hands dancing across a stage strewn with shards of glass, his stumps in the air (I would make a point of picturing his broad shoulders and muscular arms); sightless lovers embracing at the airport, their white canes fallen to the floor. At the very least, as I sat and waved a charcoal pencil in the air, I would be respected as someone with an artistic bent. The guard would bring me a chair with a back to sit on. Yet, should I become a professional painter, I am afraid my success would endanger our love, since Coenraad and I differ fundamentally in our tastes. Our only quarrel took place over coffee in the Frick Museum in New York.

 
– Those women are unreal, I objected, yet you stand there hypnotized. Can’t you see they’re false as their wigs?

  – You really lack an appreciation of beauty.

  – It’s those big breasts and blank faces you go for. All that flesh! As far as I’m concerned, nudes are a slut on the market.

  – At least they’re human, not some ugly mess of paint that you admire.

  – It’s obvious you have no understanding of Contemporary Art.

  – And you have no background to appreciate the great masters.

  – Huh! You talk about defending democracy, all the while you lust after the bow-legged chairs of dead aristocrats.

  I have been standing in front of a Bonnard for some time, how long I cannot tell, lost in its colors, yet my eyes are drawn again and again to two long casement windows through which a clear, blue sky is visible. I cannot move. At the bottom of the frame on a little gold plaque I read, Pierre Bonnard, Dining Room on the Garden, before 1933. I absorb into myself the brilliant red and purple and orange until I can contain no more. There is a cloth the color of lilacs over the table. I eat fruit from white-stemmed golden bowls; I drink from a white pitcher. The sun, not seen directly, is reflected on the left wall in an oblong of gold. I advance into the canvas towards the windows which I intend to open to the perfume of the garden below. Suddenly I come across a wraith-like form, barely discernible in the right-hand corner beside the window. I draw back. I had not noticed her, as she has been painted into the background, her face the same reddish-brown as the wall, her figure obscured by a tall blue vase of red roses. As I stare at her, surprised she is still there, I notice that her mouth is tight with pain, and her eyes, which are averted, are slits beneath swollen lids. She is visibly distressed.