The Dream (7 page)

‘And is that so hard?’ asked my grandfather.

‘For her, yes,’ answered my mother. ‘She won’t work in an ordinary dress shop. She’s turned down a few jobs already because they were in what she calls low-class places with low-class workers and customers. In England she worked in a fancy dress shop that catered to rich women. And that’s what she wants here. High class.’

My mother spoke sadly. Rose was still a problem to her, refusing to talk to her most of the time and apparently still bearing a grudge against her for having turned the parlour into a shop. ‘I just don’t know what to do with her,’ she said.

‘Don’t worry,’ Aunt Lily put in. ‘She’ll get over it. She’ll meet some fellow soon and that’ll be the end of her silly ideas. Give her time.’

‘What about you?’ my grandfather asked. ‘Have you met a nice fellow yet?’

This was an old story, Aunt Lily being without a fellow, considered an old maid already. She was the only one of the girls in her family who was not married. But things had changed. I noticed that Aunt Lily and Uncle
Saul
exchanged a swift glance. That glance was full of meaning about something the old man did not know. Nor did we ourselves have any inkling of what lay behind that look.

Just then my father came striding into the room. He ignored everyone, including my grandfather, whom he had not seen yet. He seated himself at the table and spoke to my mother in his rough tone. ‘If there’s an egg in this house fry it for me and don’t take all morning.’

It was not an unusual sort of greeting for him and it did not surprise anyone, though it cast a damper over the table and everyone became silent. My mother hastened to comply, and my grandmother scowled and showed her displeasure by turning her back on him.

My grandfather had been watching him with an amused expression on his face. He spoke first. ‘Yankel,’ he said, ‘don’t you know your father?’

My father’s face was twisted sideways. He was not looking at him. ‘Since when’, he said, ‘do I have a father?’

The old man laughed. ‘When were you without a father?’ he said. ‘From the day you were born you had a father.’

‘So where have you been all the years since I was born? I don’t remember ever seeing you. Where were you to greet me when we came from England? Were you there? They tell me you were in New York. What the bloody ’ell were you doing in New York? Isn’t Chicago good enough for you any more?’

The old man laughed again softly. ‘Yankel,’ he said, ‘you haven’t changed.’

My father ignored this comment. He was quite obviously in a bad mood. ‘They tell me you were in New
York
on business. What sort of business have you got there? You don’t fix roofs any more?’

‘I’m too old for roofs,’ my grandfather said, ‘but roofs aren’t the only way to make a living. Here in America there are plenty of opportunities. They call it the land of opportunity. So why should I go crawling up roofs?’

My father’s curiosity was sufficiently aroused for him to ask in an almost normal voice, ‘So what is it then you do?’

My grandfather let out a chuckle this time. His eyes had narrowed and taken on an almost cunning expression. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I do what is best for me to do. I make a living. That is the most important thing for any man to do.’

The normalcy hadn’t lasted long. The anger surged out of my father in a sudden eruption. He banged a fist on the table and a milk jug spilled over. ‘So what the bloody ’ell is it you do?’ he shouted.

My grandmother had swung round and fury came on her face when she saw the milk spilling all over the table. ‘Madman,’ she shouted. Perhaps she would have intervened in any event. But this may have given her the excuse she wanted. Her voice roared out, louder even than his. ‘Madman, who the hell do you think you are? You think this is your house? You can do anything you want here? Did you buy that milk? Did you buy the egg your wife is frying for you? Did you buy anything here? I took you and your whole family in and gave you food to eat because you had no other place to go, but I can kick you out just as easily, and you dare open your big mouth once more and knock over my milk again and that’s what will happen, out you’ll go!’

It was a storm that my mother had been dreading, had seen coming in the collisions the two had already had, and she looked up from the stove where she had been frying my father’s egg with horror on her face. It was what she had been fearing since the day we came here. She had been warning my father. If he kept on getting into arguments with her, she would throw us all out. And where would we go? Was this the moment she had been dreading?

Perhaps it would have been if my father had answered her. But he didn’t, strangely, and my mother’s warnings may have had some influence at that particular moment. He remained silent, and when my mother placed the fried egg in front of him on a plate together with some toast he wolfed it down, eating as he always did with head bent low over the plate and shovelling the food into his mouth fast with little grunts and noises, and the rest of the table remained silent, my grandmother too, and soon everyone got up and left, and my father strode out too, and we heard the front door bang after him, and that was almost like the days in England when he would be striding off to his pub. Except that now he did not have any money to buy drink and would have to go to Uncle Abe where there was plenty in the closet of what he wanted, and yes, perhaps needed badly.

In the days that followed my grandfather came and went, and we saw little of him. He was on the same mysterious business that took him to New York for long periods at a time and we still did not know what it was. The others knew, but there was obviously a conspiracy of silence among them to keep it from us. My father stopped asking. He was having trouble finding a job and
he
slogged his way around the city daily hunting for a tailoring job, the only kind of work he knew. Both my brother Saul and sister Rose were having the same sort of trouble, but Joe was beginning to learn the business of selling magazine subscriptions with Uncle Saul’s tutelage, the two going out together every morning and coming back in the evening, sometimes exhilarated with the luck they’d had, sometimes gloomy when they hadn’t made a single sale all day.

The little money that Joe earned he gave to my mother, who tucked it in the purse she kept on a string inside her dress, but it was still not enough for us to get a place of our own and that is what she wished for now more than anything else, for the threat of my grandmother hung over us constantly, and you could never tell when the next clash would take place between her and my father.

As for me, I kept on exploring the city of Chicago, always finding something new, another beach, another park, a zoo that I had never seen before, and for several days I kept the quarter I had been given in my trouser pocket, not allowing myself the toffee for which it had been intended by my grandfather. I did not quite know what to do with it, until suddenly it occurred to me that now I could afford a ride on an elevated train. I had always wanted to do that and now I had the means for it.

That morning, instead of setting out on another exploration trip on foot, I headed for the nearest L station, which was several blocks away from the house. With a feeling of excitement in me, clutching my quarter to give to whoever you paid for the fare, I mounted the steps along with a number of other people. Everybody
was
hurrying and I hurried with them, anxious to get on the first train that came. I could already hear the distant roar of one heading towards the station.

In fact, as I climbed upwards I tried to get ahead of those in front of me in order to be able to catch the train that was coming in. However, there was a sudden blockage. Several of those in front were coming to a halt momentarily and delaying my passage. As I struggled impatiently to get past them, I saw the reason for it. There was a landing just before the last flight of steps, and seated on the landing was a blind beggar wearing blue glasses. He was holding out a tin cup and people paused to fish in their pockets and toss some coins into the cup.

I was a bit annoyed and would have managed to get past them if the beard hadn’t caught my attention. It was a scraggly grey beard that the beggar wore and reminded me of someone I knew, and then I saw the weather-beaten face fully behind the blue glasses, and with a violent shock I realised that this old beggar was my grandfather. Nor could I mistake the croaking voice that was singing.

I came to an abrupt halt and this time it was others behind me who fought to get past me. I stood and stared, incredulous. There was no mistaking it. This, then, was the mystery that they had been keeping from us.

He saw me as I stood there, not wanting to believe what I saw, and it seemed to amuse him. I heard the familiar chuckle escape from him. He waited for two more people to go by, one of them tossing a coin into his cup, and then he spoke to me. ‘Hello, Harry,’ he said.

‘Hello,’ I said.

‘Are you surprised?’ he asked.

I nodded.

‘What could I do?’ he said. ‘American roofs are not like English roofs. I didn’t know that. So I slipped and fell off one. I hurt a leg. That meant I could never fix roofs again. But I could sing. And so I sing to make a living. It’s not so terrible.’

I didn’t say anything. More people came and went. More coins were tossed into the cup. The train had come and gone. It didn’t matter.

‘Are you going to tell them?’ he asked.

I still didn’t say anything.

‘About your father I don’t care,’ he said. ‘But I like your mother. She is a very nice woman.’

‘Grandpa,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to go.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Just for a ride on the L.’

‘Then go and enjoy yourself.’

I went up the last flight of steps and got on the next train that came in, but I didn’t enjoy myself.

It was a week before I told my mother. I could no longer keep it to myself. She was terribly upset. She wanted to know if I was absolutely sure that it was my grandfather. I said I was quite sure. I told her we had talked a bit and he knew my name, so there couldn’t be any doubt. She didn’t want to believe it. I knew that. I knew how she felt about things like begging and taking charity. Even in the worst of times she would not have accepted any kind of help from anyone.

I remember one time when things were very bad for us and the shop was not making any money, she inadvertently overcharged a customer by a halfpenny. It
was
night and it was raining and blustery outside, but she put on her shawl and took an umbrella and ran to where the woman lived a goodly distance away to return the halfpenny. She was that way about money, and to find now that her own father-in-law was a common street beggar must have been a terrible blow to her.

But to make matters worse, while we were still talking about it, my father came in. He had just returned from job hunting yet again and was in a mood that showed the empty results. It was a dangerous mood. It should have been a warning to my mother, but in her disturbed state she felt she had to tell him. As he listened his face darkened still more. Then, after she had finished, without a word he swung round and walked out of the room.

Instantly my mother followed him, crying, ‘Where are you going?’

He didn’t answer her but kept on walking straight to the kitchen. She followed him, knowing what he was about to do now and begging him not to. I ran after her.

My grandmother was sweeping a floor in the kitchen and she looked up startled as we all came in. Even when she did housework my grandmother wore her jewellery. She had on a brilliant necklace and a thick gold bracelet. My father pointed to them and through gritted teeth demanded, ‘Where did you get that jewellery?’

She was obviously taken aback by the question. She stared at him for a moment, then, recovering a little, snapped, ‘I bought it. What business is it of yours?’

‘And where did you get the money from?’ he demanded, his teeth so tightly locked that the words came out with difficulty.

She didn’t answer him. She simply stared.

‘I’ll tell you where you got it from,’ he continued. ‘You got it from a beggar, from a street beggar who pretends to be blind and will be blind when I get done with him. So that’s the respectable business he’s got in New York. Or is that just a branch of the business he’s got here? I’m surprised you didn’t send me out to beg for you when I was five years old instead of to a slaughterhouse when we were in Poland. I’d have made more money for you, and then you wouldn’t have had to run away and leave me all by myself when I was still a boy. Now you send out an old man to beg for you so you can buy yourself all that fine jewellery and bring shame on the rest of us.’

He was breathing hard and the spittle was coming from his mouth as he spoke, and she, she was fully recovered now from the surprise attack he’d launched on her, and the fury was mounting inside her massive bosom, and she struck back and struck hard, shouting, ‘Shame? Is that all you get from it? What about the money? When anybody’s short of money – for the rent, for a new pair of shoes, for a set of teeth from the dentist, for a doctor’s bill, or for steamship tickets to come to America – where do they come? They come to me and when I give them the money they need they don’t feel any shame. They know where it comes from and they take it and they’re glad of it. And you? How do you think you got here? Where did that money come from? I’ll tell you one thing. I didn’t want it. I didn’t need a madman like you on my hands again. I’d had enough of you. In my old age I wanted a bit of peace. But your father wanted it. He wanted to make up to you, he said, for leaving you in Poland. So he sent you the tickets.’

I heard my mother give a little cry. She knew now where the tickets had come from and my father knew also. He threw a look of fury at my mother and said, ‘Good for you! This is what you deserve. England wasn’t good enough for you.’ But he wasn’t done yet with my grandmother. ‘If you think I wanted to come to America you’re mistaken. As far as I was concerned, you could have taken those tickets and shoved them up your big fat arse. I came here because she wanted to come, not because I wanted to see you or the blind beggar, and I’ll tell you right now nothing can make up for what you did when you left me in Poland to be by myself, and as far as I’m concerned you and him too can both go straight to hell.’