‘She’ll be a different child now that she’s at school,’ Berka said when Dovid returned to the veranda. ‘She’s been with adults too much and has soaked up all their troubles. The child understands more than we think.’
‘Indeed she does,’ Dovid said sitting down on a chair opposite Raizel. If he stretched out his hand he could smoothe out the frown from her forehead. ‘Has Benjamin left yet?’
‘He leaves tomorrow, may he go in good health,’ Berka said. ‘What did the doctor say about him, Gittel?’ He turned to his sister-in-law who was standing in the doorway.
‘Poor Benjamin. The veins around his heart are calcified. He must lose weight and he must get stronger glasses, he’s half blind. All alone in that dorp with no one to look after him. That’s a life?’
‘I’ve got a match for him,’ Berka said drily. ‘A woman with several daughters whom he can treat like his own. If he hadn’t gone to the doctor I’d never have believed that he had a heart, even a calcified one.’
‘Berka!’ Gittel said reproachfully.
‘Come for a stroll to our house, Gittel. Let’s see how Yenta’s bottling is getting on. I hear you also bought peaches today. Are you coming home, Raizel?’
‘Later, Dad. I want a book from Dovid.’
Gittel looked from Dovid to Raizel, then sat down on the chair Berka had vacated.
‘I won’t come, Berka,’ she said opening her newspaper. ‘I’m tired. Today was washing day and the girl had to be watched all the time. I must also finish reading the “Americaner” by tomorrow. That’s when I pass it onto Chaya.’
‘No is no,’ Berka shrugged. ‘There were times when the ladies liked to walk with me. I must go and rescue Joel from that bore Benjamin. Since supper he’s been closeted up in his room with the holy man. Poor boy, he must be crazy with boredom already.’
‘Have you got another book for me?’ Raizel asked Dovid sulkily.
She was frustrated by Gittel’s stolid presence and angered by Dovid’s helplessness. This was not how she imagined love. She wanted to be pursued, swept off her feet and borne away by a masterful man who would deal adequately with a suspicious mother-in-law. Dovid simply sat there looking at her with big soulful eyes, as Ruth had done that morning, doing nothing, saying nothing, accepting his fate. More than that: shaping his fate. He would never leave Sheinka; they would never become lovers; she would never be a part of his life.
‘Try this one,’ Dovid said. ‘I took it out of the library last week but the humour’s beyond me. Dickens’s serious novels I understand but ‘Piekviek Papers’ is beyond me. I don’t understand English humour.’
You don’t understand any humour, Raizel wanted to scream. You don’t know how to laugh at all, especially at yourself. “Piekviek Papers.” Why did I ever imagine myself in love with you?
As she took the book his slender hands enclosed hers. She flushed deeply and turning to Gittel said:
‘Good night, tante Gittel.’
‘Good night, my child,’ Gittel smiled benignly. She had become so engrossed in the latest instalment of ‘The Dark Stranger’ that she had forgotten her vigil. Nothing moved her as much as a sad love story.
Dovid went into the lounge and pressed his head against the sofa. The smell of Raizel’s hair had all but gone. He must end this madness. Raizel was both kinswoman and strange fruit. If ‘Pickwick Papers’ was alien to him, how much more so was she? She had something of the pagan in her and her strong but mistaken passions recognised no boundaries. And what was love without compassion or obligation? More was involved than the practical difficulties of leaving a wife and children. She did not understand that the very act of deserting Sheinka would poison their relationship. Could one build a life on a despicable act, he had asked her. Can one build a life on a lie, she countered.
Poor misguided child. Love in her eyes condoned everything. I’ll be your mistress, she offered, speaking like a character from a romantic novel. Dovid smiled at the sheer absurdity of the idea. In books, at least, lovers were conveniently provided with private incomes and with a place where they could meet. He could not even exchange a few words with Raizel without his mother-in-law breathing down his neck. Should he perhaps take a monthly loan from Steinberg the butcher and rent an apartment?
They belonged to different, irreconcilable worlds. He could not even say to her ‘I love you’; it sounded false to his ears. ‘Ich lieb dir’ would fall strangely on hers. When he spoke Yiddish to her she often looked puzzled, as though he were a stranger. When he spoke English, he felt bereft of dignity as he slurred his ‘r’s’, mispronounced the ‘a’, and hesitated over the ‘th’.
But beyond the verbal barrier lay a deeper problem. He was not even sure that love meant the same thing to them. His doubts were reinforced when he listened to her records. ‘I can’t give you anything but love, ba-by!’
What had this to do with the way he felt about Raizel; the anguish, the desire, the hopelessness of it all?
‘Tatteh! Tatteh!’ Ruth called out, ‘Please come. I’m having bad dreams again.’
Dovid sat on the bed with her and stroked her damp brow.
‘It was horrible,’ she said drawing close to him. ‘A big black snake came out of the peaches in the wagon and bit the baby, and although I was watching I knew that the baby was me. Don’t go away. Sing me a song and stay till I fall asleep. I’m afraid of that black snake.’
He lay down beside her and sang softly.
When Ruth woke the next morning she slipped her hand under the pillow: the money was still there. She dressed quickly, slipped the knotted-up money into her bloomers and went into the kitchen where Gittel was reluctantly cutting thin sandwiches for her.
‘New fashions,’ she said wrapping the sandwiches in a piece of brown paper.
Ruth walked slowly along the school path. It was still early but the sun was already hot. She stopped at a bush of four o’clocks and plucked the half-open flowers off the stems, threading them onto a long piece of grass. This necklace will be for Mavis, she decided as she tied the succulent end of the grass to its flowering head. With her case in one hand and the necklace in the other, she walked slowly through the veld, humming softly to herself. As she approached the school she felt a momentary stab of anxiety, but when she remembered that after school she was going to buy chips with Mavis, she walked on resolutely. She looked down at her necklace of four o’clocks. Perhaps Mavis would think it a silly present. She hesitated, then threw it into the grass.
‘Are you coming to me after school?’ Mavis asked as they walked into the classroom.
‘Yes,’ Ruth replied. ‘I got money from Bobbe Gittel. For chips.’
In spite of her impatience for their adventure to begin, school passed quickly and pleasantly. In Bible class they heard the story of Noah and his Ark. Daniel sat silently through the lesson and when Miss Greenblatt invited questions, he looked out of the window.
After they had repeated their lesson to Miss MacCarthy’s satisfaction, she handed them small squares of rough black paper and a few pastels. She walked up and down the aisles, stopping every now and again to look at a drawing. Ruth was completely absorbed in her work. She drew two yellow mine dumps in one corner and a yellow sun with rays shining out of a horizontal strip of blue sky. Next to the mine dumps she drew two green trees with bunches of red cherries in them.
‘Very good,’ Miss MacCarthy said. ‘Very good indeed, Ruth.’
She held it up for everyone to see, turning it this way and that. Ruth dropped her head; her heart was bursting with joy.
‘You can take it home to show your mother,’ Miss MacCarthy said, ‘and tomorrow we’ll pin it onto the wall.’
At playtime she and Mavis sat down on the rock under the trees. From a distance she saw Paul playing football with the other boys. Once, when the ball rolled near them he retrieved it and called out, ‘Hello Gingey. How’s the dog?’ Ruth looked away angrily. The poor stray was nowhere to be seen.
‘Bully!’ Mavis said softly when he was out of earshot.
Ruth felt loved and protected.
‘Your sandwiches smell nice,’ Mavis said. ‘I’ll change one with you.’
Ruth gave Mavis the thinnest of her schmaltz sandwiches but remembering Gittel’s warning, refused to accept one in return.
‘I’m not hun-gry,’ she said, pleased with her pronunciation.
‘I’m not hungry,’ Mavis corrected.
Ruth was puzzled. Then why did she take the schmaltz sandwich?
After school they walked to Mavis’s house. It was a small corrugated iron cottage which was surrounded by a well-kept garden. The interior was dark and hot, in spite of the open windows.
‘Ma’s gone to the shops,’ Mavis’s sister told her. She was a tall blond girl with a thick plait hanging down her back. ‘You’re to take the fried fish from the ice chest and have a glass of milk. There’s only one piece left so you’ll have to share.’
‘I don’t want lunch. We’re going to buy chips at Davis’s. And you can’t come with us,’ Mavis taunted. ‘Ruth’s got money.’
‘She never shares with me,’ Mavis said as they walked over the veld towards Main Street.
Ruth was overjoyed. This was even better than having your own sister.
She waited outside the shop while Mavis bought the chips. Faint misgivings stirred in her as she watched Ron Davis fry the chips. Perhaps the oil was dirty; perhaps it wasn’t kosher.
But when Mavis came out of the shop with the newspaper packet, the smell of chips smothered in vinegar and salt dispelled all her qualms. They did not open the packet until they reached the narrow backstreet to the north of Main Street which ran parallel to the railway line. Each took a turn in holding the chips and they ate slowly, savouring each one. As Ruth pressed the chips against her palate with her tongue, she thought that she had never eaten anything as delicious before. While she ate she talked rapidly and at great length. If Mavis did not always follow her, she gave no sign of it.
When they had worked down to the bottom of the packet, Mavis licked her fingers, crumbled the paper into a ball and threw it over the fence onto the railway line. They watched until a train passed over it, then returned over the veld to Mavis’s house, playing trip knots all along the way.
With her drawing in her case and with a lightness of heart such as she had never felt before, Ruth returned home. Her only regret was that she had not saved a chip for Zutzke who sniffed at her hands.
‘Take your tings and voetsek from here!’ she heard Gittel shout in the backyard. ‘Choleria, genavte! A kraink zol dir avekleigen!’
‘I didn’t take it missis. ‘Strues God. I didn’t take it. Come setch my room.’
‘Voetsek from here!’ Gittel raved, ignoring Ruth at her side.
Dora ran to her room, crying loudly and bitterly.
‘The thief!’ Gittel said walking breathlessly up the steps. ‘Yesterday she must have heard me tell you where I keep my purse. When I went to my chestadraw just now I found a shilling missing.’
Ruth felt a sick lurch in her stomach.
‘Perhaps she didn’t take it, Bobbe. Perhaps you spent the money and forgot. Or lost it.’
‘So rich I am that I don’t know how much money I’ve got? A shilling is missing I tell you. Go and watch that she doesn’t steal anything from the washing line. The dishcloths are still hanging there.’
Waves of nausea flowed through Ruth. She went into the backyard and crept into Dora’s room where she was packing her clothes into a cardboard box, crying all the time.
‘Miss Ruth, I’m not a tief,’ she said between sobs. ‘I didn’t touch the missis’ money. Ai, ai, ai. She said she not pay the month and will call a poleesman. It’s a long jenny home. No job, no money. Ai, ai, ai.’
Ruth felt she was choking. This was the first time she had been in Dora’s room. It was small, dark and stuffy and smelled of gutted candle and smoke. An iron bed stood in one corner, raised from the floor by three bricks under each foot. Above the bed, on the rough unpainted wall, hung a small unframed picture of Jesus Christ on the cross, with blood streaming from his pierced hands and legs. On the cement floor next to the bed was a large wooden box on which stood an enamel plate with a few crusts of dry bread on it. A chipped enamel cup lay on the floor, next to a broken candle stick.
‘My chetch says, do not steal. Jesus Christ,’ Dora appealed to the picture above her bed, rolling her eyes until Ruth saw only the whites. ‘Jesus Christ, saver, carer for your children, I promist I didn’t pinch the money.’
Ruth ran out of the room and came into the kitchen white-faced with distress.
‘Bobbe, I took the shilling. I took it to buy chips for Mavis and me. Here, smell my hands. They still smell of chips and vinegar.’
‘Leave me alone you silly child. You don’t have to feel sorry for that thief. If she can steal a shilling she can empty out the whole house. She must go.’
‘Bobbe,’ Ruth appealed desperately, beginning to cry. ‘I took it. I took it last night when I went to bed and I tied it in my hanky like Bobbe Yenta does. I took it, I took it!’
‘Shah, shah! Everything upsets the child. You’ve got a good heart, mein kind, but Dora must go. She stole the money.’
‘I’m going to be sick!’ Ruth cried, rushing outside to the lavatory.
Dora stopped wailing. She came to the lavatory door and watched Ruth vomit into the bucket.
‘Shame. Po’ child,’ she said.
When she saw Gittel come out of the kitchen, she fled to her room.
Dovid found Ruth in bed when he came home. She looked flushed and feverish. Gittel told him in a whisper what had happened.
‘So I put her to bed and she dozed off for a while but she hasn’t stopped weeping all afternoon, repeating that she stole the shilling.’
‘Tatteh,’ Ruth said weakly getting up on her elbow. ‘I did take it. Here, smell my hands. They’re still full of chips and vinegar. Mavis didn’t have money.’
Dovid sat on the bed and drew her hand to his lips. There was a faint smell of vinegar on it.
‘Perhaps she did,’ he said to Gittel. ‘Perhaps you’re accusing Dora wrongly. Why, when anything is missing in a house, do people immediately assume that the shikshe took it?’
‘She did,’ Gittel insisted. ‘I didn’t trust her with anything. How many times did she mix up milk and meat dishes? Besides, she’s gone already. I didn’t want trouble so I borrowed money from Yenta and paid her for the month.’
‘If you did take the shilling,’ Dovid said quietly when Gittel left the room, ‘it was very naughty of you and you must never do such a thing again. But don’t worry about Dora. She’ll find a job and a better one too. I’d hate to work for your Bobbe if I were a black person. Go to sleep and you’ll feel better tomorrow. I’m going to visit your mother now. I’ll be back soon.’
‘Don’t tell her,’ Ruth clung to Dovid’s neck. ‘Don’t tell her I took the shilling.’
She cried a little, then asked him to put Zutzke at her feet. As she was falling asleep she remembered the drawing in her case. She gave another sob. That could wait until tomorrow. She would show it to Zeide Berchik before she went to school. Her father did not like mine dumps.