The Dream

by Harry Bernstein

  Yes, there were two people sitting there at the table. One of them was my grandmother in a robe and her hair down at her shoulders. The other I did not recognise at first. It was a man, a bearded man wearing shabby clothes, looking almost like a tramp. In front of them were stacks of coins of different sizes, and scattered there too were other coins through which they were sorting with heads bent close together.

  I must have made some sort of noise with the door, because instantly their heads rose and my grandmother called out sharply, ‘Who’s there?’

  I thought of turning and running back to bed, but I knew she’d come after me, so I opened the door wider and stepped in, blinking against the strong light and rubbing my eyes, and stood there not knowing what to say.

  The man spoke. ‘Is that Yankel’s son?’

  ‘It’s the younger one,’ my grandmother said and I could tell from her tone that she was angry. ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded.

  An excuse had come to me quickly. ‘I’m thirsty,’ I said. ‘I came for a drink of water.’

  ‘Then go to the sink and take it,’ she said. ‘And then go to bed.’ And I heard her mutter in a low tone, ‘They’re all a damned nuisance.’

  I went to the sink, poured a glass of water and drank some of it, and was about to leave, but the man said in a kindly tone, ‘Come here.’

  I went over to him and he put an arm round me and drew me closer. ‘Do you know who I am?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘I’m your grandfather.’

  I said nothing. I could not somehow see him as the distinguished-looking man on the sepia photo, with the neatly trimmed Van Dyck beard, the cutaway coat, the silver-knobbed cane clasped between his legs. This man was ragged in comparison, the beard was scraggly and grey, he needed a haircut too. The rest of the face not covered by the beard was red and weather-beaten. But it did have a pleasant, half-amused smile.

  ‘He’s a big boy,’ he said. ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Twelve,’ snapped my grandmother, and then to me, ‘Go to bed.’

  In the meantime she had done something strange. She had taken a cloth from a drawer and spread it over the coins on the table. She had just finished doing it as she snapped at me and the old man chuckled. ‘What are you afraid of,’ he said, ‘he’ll steal it?’

  ‘Be quiet,’ she said angrily, then once more to me, ‘Go on, go to bed.’

  ‘Let him finish his drink at least,’ my grandfather said. ‘What’s the rush for bed? Let him stay up for a while longer. I want to talk to him.’ Then he asked me, ‘Do you like toffee?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Does Mrs Turnbull still have her toffee shop on your street?’

  I nodded and sipped at my glass, only pretending to drink and at the same time keeping a careful eye on my grandmother. She was getting angrier by the second.

  My grandfather chuckled. ‘You must miss her shop,’ he said. ‘But you’ll find plenty of toffee shops here. Buy yourself some.’ He dipped his hand under the cloth and brought out a quarter. She tried to snatch it away from him, but he managed to avoid her hand and thrust it into mine. Then he said, ‘Now you can go to bed.’

  I went hurriedly, clutching the quarter, aware of the glaring eyes of my grandmother on me. I closed the door after me and slipped into bed, still clutching my quarter.

  I heard the murmur of their voices again, my grandmother’s still sounding angry, and there was more clinking of coins before I finally fell asleep.

  I slept late. When I awoke they were all at breakfast. The kitchen door was wide open and their voices came to me loudly, along with the rattle of crockery and the smell of coffee. It was a Sunday morning. Everybody was home. I could distinguish some of the voices, my brothers’, my sister’s, Aunt Lily’s, Uncle Saul’s and the hoarse one of my grandfather. I remembered it from last night, along with the chuckle he gave occasionally. I did not hear my father’s voice, though, and gathered that he was still in bed.

  It gave me more incentive to join them. I hurried to dress and went into the kitchen. They were all seated round the table talking animatedly and my entrance was hardly noticed, save by my mother, who hurried to serve me as soon as I had slipped into a seat among them. My grandmother, who was helping with the serving, frowned darkly at me, evidently remembering last night and the quarter I’d been given.

  My grandfather seemed to be doing most of the talking and I gathered that what he was saying amused them all, because there was considerable laughter. His own weather-beaten bearded face was wreathed in laughter and he gave vent to his chuckles now and then. He seemed to be enjoying himself tremendously, and they too. Uncle Saul once reached out a hand across the table and pressed his father’s hand in a gesture that showed his affection. Aunt Lily seemed to have the same feeling towards him. They were two of the three in the family unmarried and still living with my grandmother. There was a third, Eli. He was missing and I should not have been surprised. In the two weeks or so that we had been living here we learned that Eli was often not home, and if he was he slept until all hours of the day. He had never worked, and when he came home from the nights and days that he was away he was bleary-eyed and still sodden with drink, and could barely make his way to his bed. He had been an alcoholic since he was fourteen. He was the youngest member of the family of ten.

  After my grandfather finished with what he had been telling them, he turned to me and said, ‘Ah, here’s the night owl. Did you buy your toffee yet?’

  ‘No,’ I said, although the quarter had been the first thing I thought of when I awoke and it was safely tucked away in a pocket of my trousers.

  I was sitting close to him, already spooning the oatmeal my mother had put in front of me.

  He reached out with a hand and ruffled my hair. ‘He’s only twelve,’ he said. ‘But already he’s as big as a man. Soon you’ll be getting married, I suppose.’

  I said nothing and went on eating. My mother smiled. ‘He’s not ready for marriage yet,’ she said. ‘He still goes to school.’

  ‘Ah,’ said my grandfather. ‘And what is he going to be? A lawyer too, like his Uncle Saul?’

  Uncle Saul grinned. ‘I’m not a lawyer yet, Pop,’ he said. ‘I’m just hoping I’ll be one.’

  Uncle Saul was the only one of the family who had graduated from high school in America. He had planned on going further and studying law, but my grandmother had thought differently. He now worked as a door-to-door salesman selling magazine subscriptions. Now and then, evenings, I used to see him buried in a big thick law book, but those evenings had grown fewer and fewer, and he spent his time more often at the basement club to which he belonged and on taking girls out.

  My grandfather nodded at his comment and said, ‘Yes, yes, you will be one’ and for a moment he seemed to sober and the laughter died out. But he quickly recovered and turned to my brothers. ‘And you, Joe, and you, Saul? What are you going to be?’

  Joe answered promptly, ‘I’m going to be a journalist.’ It was something he had wanted to be in England when he was even younger than his present sixteen. Despite the fact that he had been thrust right into one of the tailoring shops after he left school, he had continued to have this ambition.

  Uncle Saul, who was sitting next to him, clapped an arm affectionately round his shoulders. He had taken quite a fancy to Joe and had introduced him to his basement club friends – the Rover Boys – and to some of the girls who frequented the club.

  ‘Don’t you worry about Joe. He’s going to be all right. I’ll see to that. Tomorrow I’m going to break him in to selling subscriptions. He’ll make a good living until he becomes a journalist.’

  ‘And you?’ my grandfather said, turning to my brother Saul, who had been sitting there uneasily with his face cast down, fearing the question because the answer would make people laugh at him.

  It was my mother who answered for him: ‘Saul is going to be a rabbi.’ She said it with pride, her face lighting up. It had be
en talked about before. Saul had always been devoutly religious. Since his barmitzvah he had taken to wearing tsitsis, a prayer shawl with long fringes that stuck out of the tops of his trousers, and every morning when he rose he put twilum round his head, a small leather box that contained a prayer with straps that fastened round his forehead and one arm. He held a siddar, a prayer book, in his hands and, rocking to and fro, he said the morning prayers.

  We had sometimes ridiculed him for it, but he persisted and evidently it meant a great deal to him. The tsitsis fringes showed quite clearly now, and my grandfather was looking at them and nodding his head, as if he approved.

  ‘The rabbi business is very good,’ he said. ‘People commit so many sins there is a great need for rabbis to give advice and forgive. I too wanted to be a rabbi once.’

  ‘You!’ cried Uncle Saul and Aunt Lily, and they both burst into laughter.

  ‘Yes, me,’ the old man said gravely. ‘Why not? I had a good start, a beard. And I knew all the prayers. My father taught them to me and he beat me if I didn’t say them, first thing in the morning, before every meal, after every meal, at night before going to bed. That was not counting the prayers I said in the synagogue. I was a regular prayer man.’

  It was hard to tell whether he was serious or joking. Only the eyes seemed to have a glimmer of amusement in them, and my grandmother gave a sound of what seemed like contempt and I heard her mutter, ‘He should live so! A rabbi, no less!’

  But now, suddenly changing the subject, my grandfather turned to Rose, who was sitting opposite me with that distant look on her face that she always had when she was among us. There was a touch of haughtiness mixed with it that separated her still further from us, and that she had affected along with an upper-class British accent ever since the days when we played at being rich in our empty front room that became a shop. Very little had changed with her since then, and it was obvious that she did not like the attention suddenly focused on her and by his question.

  ‘So how about you, young lady? What are you going to be now that you’re in America?’

  ‘I have no plans that I care to discuss,’ she said stiffly, then rose immediately from her chair and went out of the room with her head held high. There was a brief pause, then my mother said, ‘She’s trying to get a job as a dressmaker.’

  ‘And is that so hard?’ asked my grandfather.

  ‘For her, yes,’ answered my mother. ‘She won’t work in an ordinary dress shop. She’s turned down a few jobs already because they were in what she calls low-class places with low-class workers and customers. In England she worked in a fancy dress shop that catered to rich women. And that’s what she wants here. High class.’

  My mother spoke sadly. Rose was still a problem to her, refusing to talk to her most of the time and apparently still bearing a grudge against her for having turned the parlour into a shop. ‘I just don’t know what to do with her,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Aunt Lily put in. ‘She’ll get over it. She’ll meet some fellow soon and that’ll be the end of her silly ideas. Give her time.’

  ‘What about you?’ my grandfather asked. ‘Have you met a nice fellow yet?’

  This was an old story, Aunt Lily being without a fellow, considered an old maid already. She was the only one of the girls in her family who was not married. But things had changed. I noticed that Aunt Lily and Uncle Saul exchanged a swift glance. That glance was full of meaning about something the old man did not know. Nor did we ourselves have any inkling of what lay behind that look.

  Just then my father came striding into the room. He ignored everyone, including my grandfather, whom he had not seen yet. He seated himself at the table and spoke to my mother in his rough tone. ‘If there’s an egg in this house fry it for me and don’t take all morning.’

  It was not an unusual sort of greeting for him and it did not surprise anyone, though it cast a damper over the table and everyone became silent. My mother hastened to comply, and my grandmother scowled and showed her displeasure by turning her back on him.

  My grandfather had been watching him with an amused expression on his face. He spoke first. ‘Yankel,’ he said, ‘don’t you know your father?’

  My father’s face was twisted sideways. He was not looking at him. ‘Since when’, he said, ‘do I have a father?’

  The old man laughed. ‘When were you without a father?’ he said. ‘From the day you were born you had a father.’

  ‘So where have you been all the years since I was born? I don’t remember ever seeing you. Where were you to greet me when we came from England? Were you there? They tell me you were in New York. What the bloody ’ell were you doing in New York? Isn’t Chicago good enough for you any more?’

  The old man laughed again softly. ‘Yankel,’ he said, ‘you haven’t changed.’

  My father ignored this comment. He was quite obviously in a bad mood. ‘They tell me you were in New York on business. What sort of business have you got there? You don’t fix roofs any more?’

  ‘I’m too old for roofs,’ my grandfather said, ‘but roofs aren’t the only way to make a living. Here in America there are plenty of opportunities. They call it the land of opportunity. So why should I go crawling up roofs?’

  My father’s curiosity was sufficiently aroused for him to ask in an almost normal voice, ‘So what is it then you do?’

  My grandfather let out a chuckle this time. His eyes had narrowed and taken on an almost cunning expression. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I do what is best for me to do. I make a living. That is the most important thing for any man to do.’

  The normalcy hadn’t lasted long. The anger surged out of my father in a sudden eruption. He banged a fist on the table and a milk jug spilled over. ‘So what the bloody ’ell is it you do?’ he shouted.

  My grandmother had swung round and fury came on her face when she saw the milk spilling all over the table. ‘Madman,’ she shouted. Perhaps she would have intervened in any event. But this may have given her the excuse she wanted. Her voice roared out, louder even than his. ‘Madman, who the hell do you think you are? You think this is your house? You can do anything you want here? Did you buy that milk? Did you buy the egg your wife is frying for you? Did you buy anything here? I took you and your whole family in and gave you food to eat because you had no other place to go, but I can kick you out just as easily, and you dare open your big mouth once more and knock over my milk again and that’s what will happen, out you’ll go!’

  It was a storm that my mother had been dreading, had seen coming in the collisions the two had already had, and she looked up from the stove where she had been frying my father’s egg with horror on her face. It was what she had been fearing since the day we came here. She had been warning my father. If he kept on getting into arguments with her, she would throw us all out. And where would we go? Was this the moment she had been dreading?

  Perhaps it would have been if my father had answered her. But he didn’t, strangely, and my mother’s warnings may have had some influence at that particular moment. He remained silent, and when my mother placed the fried egg in front of him on a plate together with some toast he wolfed it down, eating as he always did with head bent low over the plate and shovelling the food into his mouth fast with little grunts and noises, and the rest of the table remained silent, my grandmother too, and soon everyone got up and left, and my father strode out too, and we heard the front door bang after him, and that was almost like the days in England when he would be striding off to his pub. Except that now he did not have any money to buy drink and would have to go to Uncle Abe where there was plenty in the closet of what he wanted, and yes, perhaps needed badly.

  In the days that followed my grandfather came and went, and we saw little of him. He was on the same mysterious business that took him to New York for long periods at a time and we still did not know what it was. The others knew, but there was obviously a conspiracy of silence among them to keep it from us. My father stopped asking. He was
having trouble finding a job and he slogged his way around the city daily hunting for a tailoring job, the only kind of work he knew. Both my brother Saul and sister Rose were having the same sort of trouble, but Joe was beginning to learn the business of selling magazine subscriptions with Uncle Saul’s tutelage, the two going out together every morning and coming back in the evening, sometimes exhilarated with the luck they’d had, sometimes gloomy when they hadn’t made a single sale all day.

  The little money that Joe earned he gave to my mother, who tucked it in the purse she kept on a string inside her dress, but it was still not enough for us to get a place of our own and that is what she wished for now more than anything else, for the threat of my grandmother hung over us constantly, and you could never tell when the next clash would take place between her and my father.

  As for me, I kept on exploring the city of Chicago, always finding something new, another beach, another park, a zoo that I had never seen before, and for several days I kept the quarter I had been given in my trouser pocket, not allowing myself the toffee for which it had been intended by my grandfather. I did not quite know what to do with it, until suddenly it occurred to me that now I could afford a ride on an elevated train. I had always wanted to do that and now I had the means for it.

  That morning, instead of setting out on another exploration trip on foot, I headed for the nearest L station, which was several blocks away from the house. With a feeling of excitement in me, clutching my quarter to give to whoever you paid for the fare, I mounted the steps along with a number of other people. Everybody was hurrying and I hurried with them, anxious to get on the first train that came. I could already hear the distant roar of one heading towards the station.