Chapter 7

The roll-top mahogany desk shone with a fresh coat of fragrant O-Cedar polish. They owned so much furniture that the maid rotated which pieces she cleaned each week. Knowing how proud Gershon was to have a separate room called a study, Yetta made sure that the only thing Margaret polished more often than his desk was the sideboard from which she served their meals.

His hand vacillated between the Torah and the telephone. He should start next week’s reading about the friction between Jacob and his brother-in-law, Laban. Every year he tried, in vain, to learn a lesson from it. But Laban wasn’t likeable and neither was Avram. Besides, helping others was a mitzvah. Surely God would understand if he kept his promises to his fellow congregants tonight and waited until tomorrow to study. He dialled Ruven Kleinschmidt.

“With all due respect Mr. Mendel, but if I rent to Mr. Rosenthal and his shiksa wife, half the Jewish families in my building will move out. Who wants to live next door to a scandal?”

“I’ll tell you who. Mrs. Appelbaum, Mrs. Schwartz, and every other yenta. You should charge extra for furnishing them with gossip to spread.”

“You’ll make good on the broken leases if they flee like rats from a sinking ship?”

“If you cut me an extra five percent when they don’t.” Gershon wanted the Jewish tenants to stay. Yet if they remained merely to say bad things, it would mean his advice was wrong. Did people ever spread good gossip? Yetta would say yes, but she thought well of everyone. He could ask Ruchel, but having just gotten her approval, he dared not risk getting her pitying look. What was that expression Dev used, “Quit while you’re ahead?” He’d keep quiet and hope for the best.

Next Gershon called Arnie Haber about a job for Morris. Two years ago, Arnie, who sold yard goods, was caught shorting clients by wrapping fabric around thicker pieces of cardboard to boost the weight of the bolts. With bribes in district court, plus a share for himself, Gershon had helped him avoid prosecution, but he suspected Arnie of padding bolts again. By pledging not to blow the whistle and foregoing half his share, Gershon persuaded Arnie to give Morris a job.

After that call, Gershon’s energy flagged. Solving tonight’s problems had been too easy. He preferred harder challenges that involved more creative arm twisting, like finding a place in a nursing home for a destitute woman who wet herself. He’d tackle that tomorrow, when his mind was fresher. Ditto the Torah. Enough doing good for one evening. He deserved a reward. Even if he wasn’t hungry, another glass of tea and a second slice of Yetta’s marble cake seemed only fair.

Zipporah and Ruchel were quiet behind the closed doors of their rooms. Gershon owned the building and his family occupied the entire first floor. He’d knocked down the walls between the four apartments to make eight spacious rooms for them, while he rented the smaller apartments on the two upper floors to professionals and merchants. He didn’t allow sweatshops here, although he permitted them in his other buildings where families lived in the back room and toiled alongside as many as a dozen garment workers in the front room. The heat of steamed wool and the sickening smell of shvitzing bodies mingled in their airless apartments. He didn’t know how they stood it, yet their prayers of thanks for the opportunities of this Promised Land were as fervent and loud as his. Who was he to deny them this chance? If he didn’t rent to them, someone else would. And another landlord would probably charge more. Gershon slept well at night.

He’d also dug up the back alley to create a garden. Yetta planted a few vegetables, but mostly she grew flowers. Neighbours considered this frivolous and wasteful, which to Gershon only confirmed his status, but the flowers also served a purpose. When he needed a favour from an Irish alderman, he presented the man with a rose for his wife. Or his mistress. Gershon enjoyed the perks of power, be it a choice cut of lox or a bottle of peppermint schnapps, but he’d never been tempted by the flesh of any woman other than Yetta. He grew impatient for the Shabbas bride to arrive every Friday night so he could make love to his own bride. After two decades, he hadn’t lost his ardour, nor had she. Tonight, coming upon her alone in the kitchen, he wondered if they might make love again, even though the Shabbas bride would not return for six long days.

Yetta was wrapping left-over roast beef when Gershon approached her from behind and nuzzled her neck. She hastily put the package in the ice box, as though trying to hide it from him. “Remember when we put food on the fire escape, it should keep cold?” she asked, facing him.

Many tenement families, unable to afford an ice box, still did. Now he promised to buy her a new invention, called a refrigerator, that chilled food with chemicals. No one else he knew had one. “Then you wouldn’t have to wrap the food in so many layers,” he told her.

“I’m wrapping because ...” Yetta hesitated when Gershon raised his eyebrows. “It’s for Margaret to take home tomorrow. God willing, the meat will give her poor mother strength.”

“They have their own church for that.” Gershon knew his wife was raised to share her wealth, but he resented it whenever she acted with more generosity than him. “Better I should take the leftovers to Morris Shumansky.”

“Tzedakah isn’t just giving charity to Jews,” Yetta said. “All immigrants are strangers in a strange land. Torah says to be good to them because we were once strangers in Egypt.”

“Again with the commentary on scripture? Stop getting ideas from Ruchel. Your job is to take care of your own family. Let me worry about the widows and orphans.”

“Shmuel is part of our family. You think maybe something is really wrong with him?”

Gershon sighed with exasperation. He wished there was a way for his wife to be nice to Rivka and the children without benefitting Avram, but he didn’t see how.

Yetta rested her head against his chest, a familiar gesture to calm him. “Nu, how can I not do for others when we’re so comfortable ourselves? You’ve done well for us, Gershon.”

“I have, haven’t I?”

“Better than my parents and everyone else in Lemberg dreamed.” She tugged him toward the bedroom. “Of course, God helped a bissel. Even Moses needed the Almighty’s intervention.”

Gershon let his wife lead him down the hall. “God only allowed Moses to take our people to the edge of the Promised Land. I’m helping them move in.”