The Liberation of Celia Kahn

by J David Simons

  “It is not necessary, Martha. We don’t know the family. There is no need to pay our respects. Celia can go if she wants. After all, she is friends with the boy. What do you say, Celia?”

  “I’m not sure, Papa. There is time to think about it.”

  “Why not have a piece of apple?” he offered, smiling at her. “Then please call Nathan and Uncle Mendel to the table. It is time to welcome in the Sabbath.”

  Twenty-eight

  MRS LEVY’S FUNERAL AS PREDICTED took place on the Sunday. After that, there was to be a full week of mourning. With both the Levy’s house and Agnes’ flat being in the West End, Celia decided to go to the shiva on the Monday night, then stay over in the flat to prepare for the Tuesday evening birth control session. She would have preferred not to attend the shiva house alone but she didn’t want to subject Charlotte to a room full of gossiping, tea-drinking Jewish women while the male mourners conducted their service elsewhere in the house. She would go by herself, remain as inconspicuous as possible, pay her respects to Jonny at the end of the service, retire to a night by herself at Agnes’ flat while telling her parents she would be staying with Charlotte.

  The Levy’s home was quite magnificent. The upper apartments of a grand merchant house on Great Western Road. There was a pillared entrance, then a wide red-carpeted stairway leading to a long hallway with various rooms leading off. She knew Jonny’s father owned a garment factory in the city but she didn’t appreciate that his wealth could stretch to such a wonderful home. The whole of her parent’s flat in Thistle Street could probably fit into the one front room here. She could almost forgive her mother’s excitement at her notion of being machetonim with these people. The Gorbal Jews often talked about the ganze machers – the big shots – of the West End but she had never taken these comments seriously. She didn’t appreciate that Jews could actually live in this high style in Glasgow. Like millionaires. But even with such spacious accommodation, the place was thankfully quite crowded. She was able to slip into the room reserved for women, take her place on a chair at the back by a tall, close-curtained window, gaze down at her handbag.

  She found it quite pleasant, sitting like this, anonymous, the murmur of subdued conversation, the drone of the male prayers somewhere off in another room, the smell of expensive perfume, the rustle of dresses, the vague whiff of camphor, the clink of teacups, the covered mirrors, the heat making her drowsy. Wrapped up as she was within this cocoon of her race. This was no doubt how it would feel to be ensconced within that Jewish State the Zionists craved so much. Protected. For she still struggled with the thought that here in Scotland, a man could hate a Jew enough to murder him. This was not Russia, after all. Poor Avram. And poor Jonny. To lose a mother. What would it feel like to lose her own mother? She was so often at odds with her, so appalled at some of her behaviour. Yet she could never forget that this was the woman who had borne her, given her this life. Yes, poor Jonny. No doubt, once this shiva week was over, he would be booking his passage back to Palestine where the Garden of Eden and the kibbutz awaited, where he could ride his horses, drive his wagons, hack away at the soil with his mattock, plant his oranges and lemons on land purchased with her farthings.

  She must have dozed off. For when she raised her head, many of the seats around her were empty. In their black dresses, black hats and veils, the women were quietly moving out like weary coal miners at the end of a shift. She could see the principal mourners taking their place on low stools in the hallway. There was Jonny, unshaven, his eyes hollow with tiredness, the lapel of his jacket cut by the rabbi’s knife as a symbol of his grieving. Seated beside him, the man who must be his father, a drained face set off with wild eyebrows like hanks of cotton wool, a frail body lost within a too large suit, looking as if he hadn’t much longer for this life either. Then came what must have been a couple of the deceased’s siblings, tiny women for whom these low chairs appeared quite comfortable, followed by Jonny’s own siblings – two older sisters and two older brothers. She wished them all ‘long life’, each of them clasping her hands in earnest thanks, not enquiring who she might be, for which she was grateful. Eventually, she reached Jonny at the end of the line.

  “You came,” he said.

  “Of course, I came. Why wouldn’t I?” Then she hurriedly put out her hand. “I wish you ‘long life’.”

  He took her hand in both of his. “Thank you.” He held her there. His eyes were bloodshot. She wondered whether from tiredness or tears. She couldn’t imagine him crying. “You are here alone?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  He let go his grasp. “Let me walk with you to the station.”

  “You should stay here with your family.”

  “What I should do is get out of this place. It’s like being stuck in the trenches all over again. I need fresh air. I need to see life. All this talk of death. It depresses me.”

  “It’s called mourning.”

  He smiled, a strand of spittle forming between his lips. “Everyone will be gone in a few minutes. Once the service is over, they pour out of here faster than the Children of Israel escaping Egypt. Please wait for me. And I’ll walk with you.”

  “I can’t really.”

  “Please.”

  “All right. I’ll wait for you outside. But please don’t be long.”

  She didn’t linger outside the entrance to the house. Instead, she walked up from the gateway to the next corner and back just to keep warm. She had her muffler and her coat was decent enough for the weather but the contrast after the stifling heat of the shiva house made her feel cold. Perhaps it was the chill of death itself. There was a full moon, her breath misting the air in its beam, she felt very aware of the sound of her heels on the pavement stones as she walked, her steps quicker than they might have been.

  Jonny had looked genuinely shattered back there, seated in his low mourning stool, giving her a feeling to put her arms around him, stroke away his grief. And now she would have to lie to him, let him accompany her all the way to Kelvinbridge Station, just so she could pretend to be seen off home before taking another route back to Agnes’ flat. She should have come here with Charlotte. That was her mistake. Now she was caught in her own deceit. What she needed was a cigarette to calm herself. Or a bottle of nerve tonic. Perhaps she should not turn back at this corner, but continue walking to the flat.

  “Celia.”

  She turned round, Jonny running towards her, his coat flapping, one hand holding on to his hat.

  “Thank you for waiting.” He took a rolled-up cigarette out from its tuck in his hat-band, lit up.

  “I thought you only smoked a pipe.”

  “Emergency rations. Ran out of pipe tobacco. Pinched this from my brother.”

  She wished he’d pinched one for her as well. Even though it would be unladylike for her to smoke in the street. Although Charlotte would have done it, no bother.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  “I’m just about holding it all together. She’d been ill with her lungs for a while, but it’s still a shock when it comes.”

  “How old was she?”

  “Sixty-six.”

  “That’s still a long life.”

  “I was her last child. The doctor told her she should have one more. Just to clean out her system. That was me. The system-cleaner. The bleach baby. My oldest sister just told me that as we reminisced about our darling mother.” He sucked hard on his cigarette, tossed it into the gutter. “Charming.”

  “I’m sure she loved you.”

  “I don’t think she loved any of us. She never forgave the world or God or whatever for forcing her to leave Russia. Her body might have been here but her heart and soul were always back in Odessa. In der heim, as she used to say. Thirty years in this country yet she hardly spoke a word of English. To be honest, she wasn’t much of a mother. Or a wife either. So my father put all his energy into his business. Making us a loveless but wealthy family. I’m sorry, forgive me for talking like thi
s. I know you and your family have been burdened with your own grief.”

  They had reached Byres Road. Straight ahead, Great Western Road continued on to the station. Across the wide avenue to her left, the locked-up entrance to the Botanic Gardens. Since the day of her rape, she had never stepped through those wrought-iron gates. To her right, the street that led to Agnes’ flat. Beside her, Jonny. It was if some divine force had brought her to this one spot. The Jews had a Yiddish word for it. Bashert. Fate.

  “Celia? Are you all right?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You were dreaming.”

  “Come,” she said, walking quickly away from him.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  But she didn’t answer, frightened to break the force of her will with the sound of her own voice.

  “Where are we going?”

  She was almost at Agnes’ street. She could turn back, of course. The road ahead didn’t look too beckoning anyway. The trees were bare, the branches strangely eerie in the moonlight, the dead leaves swept into little mounds along the pavement to be collected in the morning if the wind allowed. A horse and cart approached from the far end, the driver shrivelled up inside his greatcoat, hat pulled down over his face. Such soothing sounds, that slow trot, the roll of the wheels, the lazy jangle of the harness.

  “Evenin’” the driver called as he passed.

  She didn’t respond, but Jonny lifted his hat, called “Good evening” in reply. The cart trundled past. She didn’t know why but this gentlemanly exchange calmed her as if everything was now all right with the world. She walked further up the street, searching in her pockets for her keys as she did so. She unlocked the main door, hurried up the steps to the first floor, again fumbling with the keys, Jonny standing at her shoulder, she knew he was desperate to ask what was going on but she was grateful he didn’t for she didn’t really know herself. She pushed in the storm doors, then finally only the flat entrance to deal with, so many obstacles in her path. With that door unlocked, she entered the flat. She didn’t bother with trying to find the switch for the electric light, the moonlight was enough. Jonny came in behind her, she turned, closed the door with her rump, leaned up against its panels, grasped the lapels of his coat as if to keep herself from falling.

  “Hold me,” she said.

  He swept off his hat, did as he was told. She leant against the front of his coat, felt the roughness of his unshaven chin against her forehead, smelled the staleness of his body and breath, these unwashed symbols of the mourning son, feeling all the closer to him because of it. She rocked back and forth in his embrace, listened to his heartbeat, her own heartbeat, the touch of his hands on her hair, his lips close to her ear, making her tremble. She pushed him gently from her, let her hand find the cold nipple of the electric light switch, pulled it down with a harsh click. The spell broken.

  She rushed to close the curtains while he wandered around the room. Then she was busy kneeling at the fire, until he touched her shoulder.

  “Let me do that,” he said.

  “What am I supposed to do then?” she said with a laugh that was a bit too shrill for her liking.

  “Why don’t you sit down over there and tell me what’s going on.”

  She went over to the mantelpiece first, thank God for Charlotte’s cigarettes, offered him one which he refused, took one for herself, sat down in an armchair. Jonny with his back to her, still in his overcoat, scuttling the coal on to the grate.

  “I could lie to you,” she said, suddenly feeling quite in control of herself and the situation. “I could tell you this flat belongs to a friend of mine. Which is true up to a point. But that friend was Agnes Calder and you know she is dead. But she left me with a liferent to her property. Do you know what that is? A liferent?”

  “I know what it is.”

  “So I have had access to this place, to my own little nest, for the last four years. Nobody knows about it.”

  “Nobody?” he said, rising from his kneel before the fire as it started to take. He looked at his hands for stains of coal dust. Such slender fingers he had. She was surprised she hadn’t really noticed that before. She waved her own hand about with the lit cigarette. It was something Charlotte would do. “Well, the lawyer knows, of course.” She felt almost drunk now with a kind of silly giddiness. “And a few of my female comrades. But no-one from my family. Or the wider Jewish community in the Gorbals. I am a mystery woman of property. The Jewish Mata Hari of … of Maryhill. And I would like to keep it that way.”

  “So why tell me?”

  “You are leaving for your Garden of Eden,” she said. “My secret is safe with you.”

  He took off his coat, laid it down on a chair, stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets, played with some coins, while he had a good gaze around the place. “Cosy,” he said. “What do you use it for?”

  “That would be telling, Jonny Levy. But since you seem to be so good with your chores, why not put on some water to boil while I clean up.”

  She rose from the armchair, strode into the bedroom, locked the door behind herself. She gasped in a cold breath. The room was freezing. She flicked on the light, drew the curtains closed. “What am I doing?” she asked herself. “What am I doing?” Meanwhile, she realised her body was doing other things. Taking off her coat. Going over to the small sink, splashing water on to her face, washing her hands. She sat down in front of the dressing table, dabbed some powder on her cheeks, freshened up her lipstick. In the reflection in the glass, she saw the boxes of rubber caps stacked in the corner. 12 x douzaines, it said on the labels. Importe de France. She kept on watching them as she brushed her hair before eventually getting up, going over to the pile, taking out one in her size, then covering up the boxes with a blanket. She went over to the sink, washed the cap in soapy water, sat down on the edge of the bed, took down her drawers, eased her buttocks off the bed towards the floor until she sat in an appropriate squat, then carefully fitted the appliance. For extra precaution, she inserted a quinine suppository, wiped the grease off her hands with a face cloth. A shiver passed through her, a sign her body and mind had reunited again. “What a woman has to go through,” she thought. She adjusted her clothing, stood up, opened the bedroom door.

  “Come here,” she said.

  He was in the process of pouring boiling water into a teapot. Poor man, she thought, he doesn’t know what to do. One minute he’s being asked to behave like a domestic servant, the next like Rudolph Valentino. And all this on the day after his mother’s funeral. He put down the kettle, followed her into the bedroom. She switched off the light, sat down on the far side of the bed with her back to him, began to undress. She was hoping he would stay on the nearside of the bed, take off his clothes as well. She didn’t want to have to talk, try to explain anything, for if conversation were to get in the way, she was sure her courage would fail her. She stripped down to her shift, swung her body round and under the blankets in one swift movement. She almost screamed as her skin touched the freezing sheets. He moved in quickly beside her, she clung to him for warmth more than anything else, felt the rough cotton of his long underwear against her thighs where her own garment had ridden high. She lay with him in silence, their bodies warming against each other. It was quiet outside but there was a gentle “thump, thump, thump,” on the ceiling above the bed, a neighbour’s child perhaps playing with a ball. He lay on his back, she could just make out the outline of his features in the darkness, the light through the too-thin curtains. She had expected him to be relaxed and in control like some silent movie sheikh. Or like those soldiers who went to the Front, returning home with their sexual craft honed in the arms of French prostitutes with their French kissing and their French letters and whatever else the French did that was supposed to be so sophisticated between the sheets. But he looked as terrified as she did.

  “I’m not a virgin,” she said. Then added quickly. “I was raped when I was eighteen. There’s been nobody else since. I thoug
ht you should know.”

  He turned on his side towards her, raised his head onto the crook of his arm, stroked her cheek.

  “You’re shivering,” he said.

  He moved his body closer into hers, continued to stoke her.

  “I’m ready,” she said softly.

  Their lovemaking was considerate but tense. Her head was so full of concerns she could hardly allow her body to take over. Was the cap properly in place? What was she supposed to do afterwards? Leave it in, take it out? Should she douche or not? She couldn’t even feel it inside her. But that’s what that Mrs B had told her – that the man couldn’t feel if it was in place either. Strange she should pick up on this piece of advice from a client. Jonny rolled over on top of her and she had a moment of anxiety, a flash of memory of her young assailant with the dishwater blond hair. But as soon as she felt Jonny move himself inside her, that tainted thought disappeared. She arched her back to receive him, the action bringing just a stretch of pain that quickly turned to pleasure. He raised his weight on to his arms, pushed himself in and out of her, she could see his face now in the half-light, unshaven in grief, eyes pressed closed, his lips stretched over his teeth, those slender fingers digging into her shoulders, his pace gathering until it was all over. He eased himself off, let out a groan as he fell back on to the sheets, grappled for her hand, held it tight when he found it. She listened to his breathing as it began to subside, sucked in the warmth and smell of this masculine presence.

  “I will go back to Palestine,” he said. “You know that.”

  She stared at the ceiling rose, felt the grip of his hand strengthen in expectation. She knew what he wanted her to say. Instead she whispered: “You should go back to the shiva house. They will be wondering where you are.”

  He breathed out a long sigh, turned on to his side to face her, traced a finger lightly along her arm from her elbow to her wrist. She shivered. “I’m the youngest child,” he said. “It’s unlikely anyone’s noticed I’ve gone.”