Of Love and Other Wars

by Sophie Hardach

  ‘I cannot understand why you’re doing this.’ Esther covered her ears.

  ‘Once I shook you awake, but then you looked at me with such terror that I never dared try that again, so I let you just get on with it. It was every night, in the early days.’

  ‘Yes, because I suffered from somnambulism. There is no use reading anything else into it.’

  ‘Wait. I haven’t told you about your ritual yet. I’ve never told you because I knew you didn’t want to hear. But if I don’t tell you now, I’m never going to tell you. And, Essie, dear, I need to tell you.’ He sat down at one of the scaifes. ‘I’ve needed to tell you for so long.’

  She folded her hands and pressed them together. She did not want to hear what he had to say. She wanted to leave this attic and never hear it mentioned again. She wanted to pretend she had never entered a diamond-cutting workshop. Only it was the first time he had asked her for anything. Could this be true? She cast her mind back. There was not a single request she remembered, not a single demand. Not even a plea to have their cook replicate his favourite childhood dish; no, she did not even know what his favourite dish was.

  ‘Well, then.’ She sat down at the scaife next to him.

  ‘You had your ritual. It was the same every night. First of all, you would mutter to yourself. Mathematical stuff usually, so I never had a clue what it was all about. And sometimes you’d talk to people and give them orders. And all the while, you’d be hunched over something, like this, one side of your face scrunched up like this, staring at something between your hands, and your right hand would be gripping some invisible stick or tool and moving it about. And there I was, a newlywed chap half terrified of his clever young bride, and I couldn’t for the life of me understand what it was all about, until one day we dropped by your father’s workshop, this workshop, to pick something up. And there he was. I’d only ever seen him at home, or in shul, but there he was sitting hunched over his scaife, and then I knew what my bride was doing every night.’

  ‘Yet you didn’t tell me.’

  ‘You hated the subject of diamonds then, remember? You told me never to mention diamonds. I wanted to buy you a ring for our engagement, but you wouldn’t let me. A pendant, earrings. You wouldn’t let me. The only thing you ever allowed me to buy you was the wedding ring. You hated going to the workshop. You would have been mortified to hear that every night, when the world stopped watching you, you turned into a diamond cutter. It would have been unkind to tell you something that you would be ashamed of, and that in any case you couldn’t change. Once Miriam was born, you did it less and less, until . ⁠. ⁠. well, you know, until about a year before the war.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Less fretfully. You used to be very agitated and fretful, as if that blasted diamond was about to slip out of your fingers. It was terrible to watch. Now you just sit there like a contented old cutter at his scaife.’ He paused. ‘In the beginning I was worried that it would give you . ⁠. ⁠. how shall I say? . ⁠. ⁠. a nerve fever, you know. That it would harm the child. All that rocking back and forth and shouting orders and muttering formulas – it didn’t seem a healthy thing for a woman who’s expecting to do. But I didn’t want to tell anyone about it. It would have felt disrespectful towards you. So . ⁠. ⁠.’ He scratched his cheek in embarrassment. ‘Well, this will sound terribly daft, but I . ⁠. ⁠. well, you know, we were very young, weren’t we, and the young come up with all sorts of sentimental nonsense?’ He scratched his cheek again. ‘You see, in those early attacks, you were . ⁠. ⁠. it was as if you were possessed. Or ill, even. And I would sit there in the dark and watch you and have no idea what to do. I didn’t want to touch you for fear of waking you up and frightening you. I didn’t want to call for help because, damn it, Essie, I thought if I told anyone about this they’d cart you off to an asylum. But I had to do something! So the only thing that came to mind was this. One night I was watching you and I remembered how you had walked around me seven times on our wedding day. Remember? To spin a protective web around me. Afterwards you said very loudly, and to everyone who would listen, that all these rites were of course hocus-pocus and future generations would laugh at them. But when you were walking around me, the truth is, Essie, I did feel protected. I was a nervous young chap, and there was this bright clever girl spinning her web around me. So that night, when your fits, or your sleep-walking, or whatever you want to call it, when it became truly terrible, and you were rocking back and forth, well, I got up and I moved the bed away from the wall a little, very carefully, with you on it, and then I walked around it once, slowly, because I didn’t want to wake you, and you went on muttering and rocking, and then I walked around it again, and you took no notice at all, and again, and by the fourth or fifth time you seemed to have calmed down a little. I walked around you seven times. You’ll say that it’s not surprising that it had a calming effect. Everyone knows that children find it soothing when you walk up and down with them, so there might be a perfectly rational explanation, but in any case, the fact is that I walked around you and our child seven times, and when I was done you simply sat still for a bit, and then you lay down and went to sleep.’ He sighed. ‘And after that, whenever it was very bad, I would walk my circles around you.’

  She slumped against the scaife and did not care that the sleeves of her dress were smudged with black diamond dust.

  ‘Did I ever . ⁠. ⁠. you know . ⁠. ⁠. did I ever talk during those attacks?’

  ‘I suppose you’re asking whether you ever revealed in your sleep that Miriam was another man’s child,’ he said as calmly as if they were still talking about how to sell the raw diamonds. ‘The answer is no.’

  ‘You knew!’

  ‘I may not be a mathematician, but I can count to nine.’

  She wiped her eyes on the sleeve, and that was her face blackened, too.

  ‘It was the most evil thing I ever did.’ Her small, shaking voice was hardly audible. ‘And I’m so sorry. My dear, I’m so very, very sorry.’

  ‘She’s our daughter in all the ways that matter. I’ve never cared about anything else but the fact that she’s our daughter.’

  ‘How you must have hated me when you found out.’

  ‘I was too relieved to hate you.’

  ‘Relieved?’

  ‘I thought I was the only one with a hidden blemish, so to speak.’ He pointed at his leg. ‘It was never broken, you know. That cast, well, my mother advised me to put it on when I first went to meet you.’

  ‘But you still walk with a limp.’

  ‘I’ve always walked with a limp. I had polio as a child, and that leg was left crippled. Only I thought you wouldn’t want me if you thought I was a cripple. My mother told me not to worry. She had an idea. I was to put on a cast and pretend I’d broken my leg. Then after the wedding, well, we never really thought about what I would tell you after the wedding.’

  ‘But my relations must have known – Hannah – my sisters knew your family. Hannah knew all about you, she told me you were considered especially kind.’ And gullible, she thought, especially kind and gullible; and she wanted nothing more than to cure all the wounds she had ever inflicted on him.

  ‘Everyone knew, Esther. Hannah, the other girls, even your mother and father. Everyone knew that I was crippled for good and that you were expecting a child. They match-made us. And what a match we were.’ He looked sadly at his useless leg. ‘There I was, limping around our bed seven times, one moment terrified that you would develop some nervous fever, the next moment terrified that you would see through the broken leg business. You were a scientist, for goodness’ sake, the brightest person I’d ever met, and here I was trying to fool you with a mock plaster cast. Then when Miriam was born, and when I counted to nine and hit on a date well before we ever laid eyes on each other, well, I was relieved. I thought, thank goodness, she’ll never mind about my leg now.’

  ‘And I never did, but not because of Miriam.
I wouldn’t have minded anyway. Whereas I suppose you must have minded once your relief, as you call it, was over. You must have rather regretted your deal.’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘I suppose that makes you a saint.’

  ‘Not a saint. Just a man who loves his wife and the little girl who’s been his daughter from the moment she was born.’

  Esther burst into sobs. She rolled the raw diamonds over the worktop with her fingers.

  ‘It was our formula.’ She was sobbing with the uninhibited pain of a child. ‘The numbers and letters I was muttering, that was our formula. I had come up with a formula for cutting the perfect stone. It was going to make us rich.’

  ‘Essie.’ Mr Morningstar thumped the worktop. ‘That man has brought us nothing but misfortune. You must let go of your obsession.’

  Esther let out an angry cry. ‘Not the Wizard! He had nothing to do with it, nothing! It was our formula, do you understand? Mine and Simon’s and Solly’s and . ⁠. ⁠.’ her shoulders were heaving with sobs, ‘. ⁠. ⁠. and Nathan’s.’

  All week the scaifes turned, but on the seventh day they stood still. The shop was locked. The hissing flames and humming wheels fell into respectful silence before the sound of songs and prayers. Esther’s father did not touch his diamonds. Her mother did not sew. Shabbat folded its thick warm blanket around them and they sat swaddled in it until nightfall. Nathan had a duplicate of her father’s keys, so it was not stealing exactly. They were going to see Leybesh, he said, and it was not a lie since they did go to see Leybesh, only then they all went to the workshop: Nathan, Simon, Solly, Esther and Leybesh, though Leybesh always grew bored and left early. Esther, the wonder girl. She measured and calculated and knew all about refraction. And her brothers, well, Nathan liked to say that he could cut a stone just by looking at it. She explained her calculations to them. They taught her to cut a stone. They would develop the perfect cut together, and it would make them rich, so fabulously rich and famous. That old lump of coal would finally have transformed itself into a gem, and no one in their family would ever have to make diamond dust again.

  Remember to write! And when you come back, we’ll finish the perfect cut. Adler & Sons & Daughter.

  She slid her hands over the cold scaife.

  ‘We were going to cut them together, don’t you understand?’ Her palms were black with dust. She touched the bench. This was the bench where Nathan would have sat. She touched the scaife to her left, Simon’s scaife, and then the one to her right, where her husband now sat. Solly’s scaife. Solly, whom they had called the rabbi because he was so studious.

  And then, with a delay of almost thirty years, she screamed. She screamed and clawed at her own face, and when her husband tried to pull her towards him and calm her, she screamed even louder and clawed at his face, until they were both smeared with black dust and grease.

  ‘I killed them,’ she screamed. ‘Don’t you understand? I made them leave, when I should have held them back. Do you know what I said to my brothers? “Remember to write!” And I couldn’t wait to see them in uniform so I could boast to my friends!’

  ‘Bullets killed them, Essie, not you. Other men killed them.’

  ‘And I killed her too. I told her to get out of the house and she moved into those grimy factory dorms and then that awful shabby flat . ⁠. ⁠.’

  ‘The bomb killed her.’

  ‘I made her sleep there. I made her leave. And I made them leave, too.’ She beat on his chest with both hands. ‘So now you’ve been warned, and what can I say, save yourself while you can. I have the touch of death, you know. Everyone near me must die, so save yourself or you’ll be next.’

  ‘That’s nonsense, and you know it. That’s pure superstition. There’s no such thing as a curse, Essie. There’s no deeper meaning to a bomb. If you want to know why our daughter died, I can tell you. She died because a high-explosive bomb hit her flat. If you want to know why your brothers died, I can tell you that, too. They died because other men fired at them with machine guns. They died because the human skin is not bullet-proof. If you want to know why we are still alive when they are dead, well, the reason is that our bedroom was not hit, and I was never called up for military service because of my leg. Everything else is nonsense and superstition.’

  She collapsed into his arms, and cried until she was spent.

  They sat on the bench together, her head on his shoulder, his thick strong arms around her shivering body.

  *

  ‘Maurice, dear.’ She smoothed back her hair, blackening the grey, and stared at the scaife with such hatred as if her brothers had been ground up on it. ‘I suppose we ought to light that gas flame.’

  He arranged the tools for her and passed her a loupe. She wedged it into her eye socket, softened the lead dop, pressed one of the raw stones into it. The formula was in her head, adjusted and perfected over thousands of nights. With the tired routine of someone who had done this countless times before, she sat down at the scaife and began cutting her stone.

  The perfect cut: it would not make them fabulously rich, but it would bring in enough money to fix the roof, to paint the walls, to build a swing in the garden for their grandson. She had thought that the house in Hampstead was too old and dangerous for a toddler, as old and dangerous as herself. She had meant to look after the little boy until the first sharp shock had worn off, and then pass him on to a cousin or a niece, where he would be safe from her curse. A spring child for a new beginning, saved from the rubble of a block of flats.

  No, she thought now, no one else was her grandson’s keeper. No one else would fold paper boats for him with such dedication. No one else would love him as much as she and her husband did. They were old, flawed, and had been mended many times over, but they would look after him and keep him safe. She felt her husband’s hand on her back. With her eyes on the spinning scaife she dreamed of the new roof, and the pale green walls, and the swings in the garden for little Nathan.

  Death Vomit

  Charlie adjusted his goggles with one hand. He had never seen a German vessel before, but now the sea was swarming with them. Submarines, freighters, warships, patrol boats moved about frantically like insects in a burning house. His squadron attacked three submarines in the bay of Lübeck. Then he and another pilot, Archie Hayes, flew west and looked for more ships. The insects had cleared the water for now. They attacked an airstrip near Schleswig instead. Charlie shot down one Dornier, Hayes another. The flak was heavier than anything Charlie had ever experienced. What a day.

  ‘Good work,’ said Hayes when they were back at the airstrip.

  ‘That flak. Unbelievable.’

  Hayes nodded and pushed back his goggles. ‘Haven’t seen anything like it since the Battle of Britain. It’s a sort of death vomit.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A death vomit. When your dog has a tick, if you’re not careful when you twist it out, it’s easy to sort of squash it. And what they do then is, they vomit into the dog. And all the disease that’s in the tick . ⁠. ⁠.’ Hayes cupped his gloved hands, ‘. ⁠. ⁠. it gets vomited into your dog. So you’ve got to be careful to get the tick out alive. And that’s what this flak fire is. A dying tick.’

  *

  On 3 May 1945, at four o’clock in the morning, a chap brought Charlie a cup of tea. Briefing: plenty of movement on the water again. Nazis leaving the burning house, possibly to Norway.

  ‘Told you,’ Hayes said, and slapped Charlie on the back. ‘Death vomit.’

  ‘They ought to have surrendered when Hitler killed himself.’ Charlie scratched his chin. ‘Saved us some trouble.’

  ‘Can’t be long now . ⁠. ⁠.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know. Death vomit.’

  Another cup of tea. He climbed into his Typhoon. Bad weather. Cloudy, rain. Could have stayed in old Blighty for that.

  He destroyed a locomotive and a couple of lorries. The weather was still too bad to attack the bay. Back to base for so
me breakfast. More tea. And up again. Another locomotive. He’d fired at so many locomotives he didn’t care if he never saw another train.

  He looked over his shoulder. Hayes’s plane was on fire. Bugger. Charlie saw him sail towards the ground, dangling from his parachute.

  After lunch the weather was still rotten. They chased some Junkers. Charlie hit one and it burst into flames. This was shaping up to be a good day. Below the formation of eight Typhoons, lorries scurried like ants across the land. And then the bay, the ships bound for Norway. The order came and Charlie pressed the salvo button. Eight rockets. Nice. Each of the other Typhoons launched eight rockets. Crikey! The largest ship looked as if it was lifted out of the water by the impact. Then it burst into flames. Bad flak from one of the smaller vessels.

  Death vomit, Charlie thought.

  *

  The chaps were celebrating. Charlie blocked the offered drink with a raised palm. It would do him good to cut down a bit.

  ‘Didn’t think I’d see you again this soon,’ he said, and knocked his empty glass against Hayes’s full one. Hayes and his parachute had landed in a tree behind a primary school. The children escorted him to a local policeman, who briefly arrested him, then released him when he heard a rumour that the Americans might be about to roll into town.

  ‘This war is over,’ Hayes said, and laughed. ‘I don’t care if it’s official or not. You should have seen the policeman’s face! And the children were so disappointed, the little bastards – they couldn’t wait to see me strung up on the nearest lamppost.’

  ‘All right then.’ Charlie held out his glass. ‘But only a small one. Hang on. Not that small.’

  He looked around. Hayes was still talking about the bloodthirsty children. A crowd of men pushed in through the doors. He knew only about half of them. The doors swung back and hit the face of a limping chap who trailed behind the others, struggling to keep up. A clerk of some sort: he was carrying a folder under his right arm.