The Moritzes were part of a small circle of Viennese who met in each other’s houses for coffee and conversation, as they had at home. It was not until Rachel befriended Sarah Sandberg that she became aware her other friends considered themselves superior to women like Sarah.
Why didn’t I realise it before? she thought one Sunday when Paula Frankl was sitting in the kitchen with her, whilst Sigmund fitted her husband’s new suit.
“You look like a peasant with that shawl round your shoulders,” Paula had just laughed disparagingly. “But at least you don’t walk out in the street in it, like they do.”
“Who do you mean by they?” Rachel asked though she knew.
“Jokes she’s making!” Paula helped herself to a piece of Sachertorte from the dish on the table. “How I wish I was back in Vienna.” Her expression grew nostalgic.
“The lilac will be in bloom just now, such a wonderful perfume filling the air.” She glanced through the window at the dingy brick wall which enclosed the back yard, then tilted the silver fob-watch pinned to her rust velvet jacket to see the time. “Three-o’clock on a Spring afternoon. The Kärntnerstrasse will be full of elegant people. Remember when we were girls, Rachel? How we used to stand on the corner beside the Palais Todesco and watch all the fine carriages go by? Once, we saw one of the Rothschilds drive past with his wife. How carefree she looked, I’ve never forgotten it.”
“Nor have I. But she didn’t live in Eisenstadt like we did, with a chain festooned across the street to separate us from the rest of the city.”
“Did you have to remind me?”
Rachel studied the other woman’s pretty, petulant face and wondered, as she often had, why a gentle intellectual like Ludwig Frankl had married such a shallow creature. “What’s the use of only remembering the good things?” she shrugged. “I too miss Vienna. Who wouldn’t? But folk like us, who weren’t wealthy or important enough to be accepted in spite of being Jewish, weren’t part of anything except the ghetto. So they did us a favour and allowed us to move freely outside it, to taste what Vienna is. Who wants their favours?”
“You didn’t want to leave any more than I did. Why’re you talking this way?”
Why am I? Rachel asked herself. Something was making her want to bring Paula down to earth, but she was also putting into words her own feelings. “Because it’s the truth,” she said quietly.
Paula played with her gloves edgily, crumpling them on her lap, then smoothing them out again. “Sigmund’s done a good job on you! When Ludwig said we were coming to England, I didn’t speak to him for a week and I still think it was your husband who influenced him. Yetta Stein thinks he talked Max into it, as well.”
Max Stein was a mountain of a man, with an ego to match his size. “Nobody could talk Max into anything,” Rachel smiled.
“And Ludwig?”
Rachel remained silent.
“My husband always gives in to me about everything, but I couldn’t make him stay in Vienna.”
“Doesn’t that prove how seriously he takes what’s going on there? Sigmund worries about his brother who’s still there, all the time.”
“My family’re there, too. So they’ll get their windows broken every now and then, it’s not so terrible. They’ll sweep up the bits of glass, go and have coffee and pastries in the Ringstrasse and forget all about it. Where can a person go here? In this miserable town? When we first came, we went for a walk in the centre one evening. Everything except the public houses where the drunks go was closed.”
“You haven’t taken a tram in the other direction? To Heaton Park with miles of grass and lovely flower gardens?”
“Sure. But where are the cafés and the smart people, and the feeling that’s nowhere else but Vienna? Who wants to see nothing but flowers and grass? If my husband had used his brains to make money for himself instead of that store he was manager for, we wouldn’t have had to leave, we’d’ve moved away from Eisenstadt and entertained the rich goys in our great big house.”
Rachel laughed. “One like the Rothschilds live in?”
“You’re making fun of me. I mean we could’ve been among those who’re accepted by Viennese society.”
“Sigmund thinks the time will come when even they won’t be.”
“Sigmund thinks!” Paula got up and paced the room. “Such a pleasant apartment you had before and me also, even if we did live in the ghetto. What have we got now, because our husbands had a brainstorm and brought us to England, where they can’t afford anything better than this? But at least I don’t have to entertain visitors in the kitchen, like you do.”
“You object to being entertained in the kitchen?”
“Listen, I know the reason. It’s not that I object.”
“Then what is it?” “
"The way it doesn’t seem to bother you. Your friends who knew you in Vienna find it sad.”
Rachel’s soft lips tightened. “I hope you enjoyed talking about me.”
“It upsets us to see how you’ve changed. You don’t even mind mixing with people from dirty little shtetlach and it isn’t doing you any good.”
“Was it their fault they had to live in them?” Rachel bristled. “And if you mean the Sandbergs, they lived in a country townlet which was probably cleaner that Eisenstadt.”
“So they’re not all alike,” Paula shrugged.
“All Viennese aren’t alike either,” Rachel told her. “Some of us aren’t snobs.”
Paula’s gaze moved to the table. “Once, you’d have put a lace doyley on that dish before you laid the cake on it. I still do. Is it snobbish not to lower your standards?”
Rachel thought of Sarah, who did not own any lace doyleys, but whose hospitality came from her heart with no notion of impressing anyone. “You know I never realised until now how empty those standards are.”
Paula sighed and shook her head. “So you’ve got a few funny ideas these days, but we still love you. Come to me for coffee tomorrow, some of the girls will be there.”
“I’m afraid I can’t. Sarah Sandberg’s coming here. Why don’t you all come and join us? My coffee pot’s big enough.”
It sounded like a challenge and Paula avoided her eye. “I don’t think so, thank you,” she said as her husband came into the room with Sigmund. “So you’ll come to me some other time.”
“I don’t think so, thank you,” Rachel replied.
Ludwig Frankl’s anxious grey eyes were fixed on his wife’s frowning countenance. “Something’s wrong, Paula darling?”
“A little difference of opinion,” Paula said stiffly.
Rachel laughed. “I’d call it a big one myself.” She turned to Ludwig. “I didn’t have time to ask how you are. You rushed straight into the workroom with my husband.”
“He was worried in case his suit wouldn’t fit,” Sigmund joked to ease the strained atmosphere.
“The trousers were too tight round the waist at my last fitting,” Ludwig accused him. “And this time they were too loose.”
“Am I to blame if you eat more shnitzels one week than you do another?”
“How can a person be, Rachel, with a tailor like him and a boss who won’t let you read while you’re working?” Ludwig smiled.
And a wife like Paula, Rachel added mentally.
“If he’d let you read while you work, you’d have no fingers left!” Paula snapped. Ludwig was employed at a glazier’s in nearby Redbank, as quite a number of immigrants were.
“So you don’t like me working there. I’m not full of joy about it myself, but what can I do?” he said placatingly.
“You should have asked yourself that before you left Vienna.”
When Sigmund returned from seeing the Frankls out, Rachel was staring through the window. “Tell me something, Sigmund,” she said without turning. “Do you still look down on the Poles and the Russians?”
“Where does looking down come into it? I think like Ludwig and Max, that it’s a waste for them to be so narrow.”
“Is that why you take such an interest in David Sandberg?”
“If I don’t, who will? All Abie cares about is feeding and clothing him and preparing him to be Bar Mitzvah. What else does the poor fellow know?”
“You don’t think it’s beneath us to have the Sandbergs for friends?”
“King Edward I’m not!” Sigmund chuckled. “So that’s what that foolish Paula’s been saying to upset you. Come, Rachel, I’d rather talk to your lovely face than your stiff back.” He turned her around and settled her beside the table, then sat down in his wing chair.
“You’re getting ready to give me a lecture?” she asked as he crossed his legs and took off his pince-nez thoughtfully. “I’m not the one who needs it. I had a shock today and I haven’t got over it yet. I used to think my friends from home mixed together to talk about old times, but it isn’t just that.”
Sigmund smiled. “I’m surprised it took you so long to find out. Their husbands I like, but those women have always been impossible.”
“But Paula is one on her own. Shall I tell you what I think about her?”
“If she wasn’t Jewish she’d be anti-Semitic,” Sigmund said before she had time to.
“How did you know what I was going to say?”