The Invisible Wall (7 page)

         

DARK, HEAVY CLOUDS WERE GATHERING
. Already lights were being turned on in the shops in St. Petersgate opposite the school. It looked as if a downpour might start any minute. Children were still swarming out of the school yard.

“Where the bloody 'ell is she?” muttered Joe.

His face was pale with worry and fear, and he could not stand still. It was not the threat of rain that bothered him, but rather that all the other Jewish children had left. As a rule, they went home together, because this was the time when the batesemas, freed from the restraints of school and the sharp eyes of Cocky Rawlings and the headmaster, went wild in the streets and launched their worst attacks on the luckless Jewish children who were caught alone. As a group, we were usually able to fend them off.

The other Jewish children had waited for a while, grown impatient, and gone off without us. There was still time to catch up with them if we hurried. Joe was frantic with impatience and kept glancing at the school door and walking to the windows to peer inside. Saul and Rose were fuming also. Rose, never fond of her older sister, was saying unpleasant things, and trying to get us to go on without her. Perhaps, if it hadn't been for the strict warning our mother always gave us to stay together, we might have done so.

At last, she came hurrying through the door, and the three of them began attacking her bitterly, accusing her of putting their lives in danger.

“Oh, shut up,” she said, contemptuously. “Nobody's going to hurt you. Just follow me.”

She took the lead, walking in front with me, holding my hand, her head held erect defiantly, with her long, silken hair flowing behind her, her pace brisk. The other three followed, casting fearful looks about them. The other Jewish children were not in sight, and it was clear that we were not going to catch up with them.

In our hurry we failed to keep our eyes open as we passed the cab stand, and Joe suddenly let out a howl and clutched his ear. One of the idly swinging whips had caught him on the edge of the ear. Then, to make matters worse, we heard jeering laughter behind us.

We swung our heads around, and there they were, the same four who had pounced on us in the morning from the vicarage wall. They were walking behind us with arms linked, full of glee at Joe's mishap, and it was clear that they were up to no good, and probably had been waiting for us to leave the protection of the school.

“Don't pay any attention to them,” Lily hissed. “Just keep walking, and don't look back at them.”

I was frightened. I'd had less experience than they, but I was already familiar with these situations. I clung tightly to Lily's hand. The other three were walking so fast they were almost crowding on top of us. And the four batesemas were maintaining the same pace. They had begun their favorite verse:

“The rabbi, the rabbi, the king of the Jews,

He bought his wife a pair of shoes.

When the shoes began to wear,

The rabbi, the rabbi began to swear.”

Howls of laughter following, hoots, jeers, cries, words. Kikes. Sheenies. Yids. Bloody Jews. Who killed Christ? They went through it all. And they were getting closer and closer.

“Don't run, don't run,” Lily hissed at my siblings over her shoulder. “That's what they want you to do. Then they'll be on you. Just keep going.”

It was a lot easier said than done. Lily was almost running herself, and I was too, terrified already by what I sensed was coming. It was just as we reached Daw Bank, and were approaching the Devil's Steps, that my brothers and sister behind us broke ranks and ran, stumbling into us. Lily and I began to run too. Then, with wild yells of glee, they were on top of us. Just as I was going down, screaming, with someone on my back, I caught a flash of someone else flying out of the Devil's Steps. The next moment, as I was being pummeled, I heard a voice yelling, “Get off 'em, you bloody little sods.” There was a thumping sound, and then the weight lifted off me, and someone was helping me to my feet.

Tears streaming out of my eyes, I looked up at my rescuer. It was Arthur Forshaw.

“You're all right now, 'arry,” he said. “They won't hurt you anymore. The little buggers have gone.”

He also helped the others up, all of them crying and more frightened than hurt. He dusted off their clothes for them, and then picked up his books. They were scattered over the ground, and one of them that he still held in his hand he had used as a weapon on the heads of our attackers.

We helped him pick up the books, all of us grateful, Lily effusive in thanking him. “You saved our lives,” she said.

Arthur grinned. “I wouldn't go that far. I just bashed a few heads, that's all. Never knew books could be useful that way, too.”

We began walking home, with Arthur and Lily walking in front, and the rest of us following. Lily seemed to have forgotten altogether about me, and she and Arthur talked steadily and animatedly as they went along. I watched them from behind. They seemed to have so much to say to each other, and they made quite an interesting picture, the two of them, Arthur tall and towering over her, and Lily looking up at him as she spoke or listened, her long silken, brown hair flowing down to her slender waist, bobbing with her quick, eager movements.

Rose was noticing them too, and could not hide her jealousy. “Just look at her,” she muttered. “Look at the way she's sucking up to him. You'd think he was a prince or something, or a lord or a duke, instead of just a common bates from our street.”

“He saved our lives,” Joe reminded her, echoing Lily's words. “And he goes to the grammar school.”

“Anybody can go to the grammar school,” Rose said contemptuously. “It's not like Eton or Rugby. Those are the real high-class schools. He's just a bates, and she's in love with him. Anybody can tell that, and I'm going to tell her.”

By “her” she meant my mother. Ever since she had lost her imaginary drawing room to the shop, she had refused to talk to my mother, and she referred to her always as “her,” just as we referred to our father as “he.” And this jealousy of Lily was nothing new; it had been that way from birth almost and it would always be that way. This, together with her new attitude toward my mother, would continue well into adulthood, and would be a source of constant pain to my mother.

My mother was waiting for us outside on the corner as we approached along Brook Street. She was searching anxiously into the distance, with one hand cupped over her eyes, even though there was no sun out. In fact, it had begun to rain, and she was holding an umbrella over her head. She had started worrying ever since she saw the other children come home without us. She had been about to set out in search of us.

Joe, Saul, and I ran up to her, and excitedly poured out the story of the attack. She listened in horror. She put an arm tightly around me. “That this should have happened on his first day,” I heard her mutter. “Why didn't you come home with the others?” she asked.

Joe, our spokesman, said, “We couldn't. Lily had to do something for the headmaster, and she kept us waiting.”

“Where is she now?” Mother was a little bewildered too. Rose had walked straight past her and gone into the house—that was to be expected. But somehow, with her attention focused on us, she had not noticed Lily walk by with Arthur.

“She's over there,” Joe said, pointing.

Lily and Arthur had come to a halt in the middle of our street, and they were both still talking in the same animated fashion. The rain was coming down quite heavily by now, but I doubt if either one of them noticed it. Our eyes swung over to them, and in my mother's eyes there appeared a different sort of expression. She was about to call out to Lily, but Joe interrupted.

“Arthur saved us from the batesemas,” he told her. “He saved our lives.” Joe went into details, explaining the rescue.

It made my mother hesitate. “That was wonderful,” she said. “I'm going to have to thank him for what he did.” But aside from that, it made no difference, and she called out, “Lily!”

Lily, interrupted, turned her head. “Yes?” she called back.

“It's raining hard. You'd better come in.”

“I will in a minute,” Lily said, impatiently.

“No, I want you in now.”

She said something to Arthur, and then they separated, he going toward his house, Lily to ours. We followed Lily inside. She was excited.

“Oh, Mam,” she burst out, “guess what? I was just talking to Arthur Forshaw, and I told him how I planned to take the scholarship exam this winter, and he said he would help me prepare for it. He's still got the books he used to study for the exam, and he's going to let me have them, and he said I can come into his house after school and he'll go over the studies with me. Isn't that wonderful? I'm bound to win now.”

“Yes, it's very nice of him,” my mother said, slowly. “But I don't think—”

Before she could finish, Lily had remembered something. “Oh, Mam, the headmaster gave me this paper that he has to sign. It's for the exam. The headmaster says it should be done as soon as possible, and unless he signs it I won't be able to take the exam.”

She had been fishing in the pocket of her pinafore, and she brought the paper out and handed it to my mother, and I could see the uncertainty with which my mother took it from her, and the unhappiness on her face. “Can't I sign it?” she asked.

“The headmaster said he has to sign it.” Then she asked, “Mam, can I go over to the Forshaw's house now?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don't want you going into a Christian's house.”

“Oh, Mam,” she wailed. “Mam, Mam, what's wrong with it? Why can't I go into a Christian's house?”

“Because you're Jewish, that's why.”

“Well, then, can he come in here? He said he would if I wanted to.”

“No, he can't come in here. I don't want a Christian in my house.”

“But you let Mrs. Green come in. And Annie, too. And you have Christians coming into the shop.”

“That's different. I don't want Arthur to come in here.”

“But if he can't come in here, and I can't go into his house, then how is he going to be able to help me? Don't you realize what this means to me? If Arthur helps me, I'm bound to pass the exam, and I'll get the scholarship and I'll be able to go to the grammar school, and then maybe I can become a teacher, and I won't have to go into the tailoring shop.” She was desperate, pleading, and suddenly she remembered. “Mam, do you know what Arthur did for us today? When we were coming home from school there was a bunch of batesemas and he—”

“Yes, I know,” my mother interrupted. “Joe already told me. I'm very grateful to Arthur. I think it was a wonderful thing that he did, and I'm going to make up a basket of fruit for him. But he's a Christian, and I don't want him in the house and I don't want you in his house.”

Lily let out a cry of anguish. “Oh, you,” she spluttered, “you're just what Rose says, you're, you're—” She could not say it, and she burst into tears and dashed upstairs.

Chapter Four

WELL, NOW, THE AUTUMN DAYS HAD GONE BY BEFORE YOU KNEW IT, AND
winter came on with the cold weather that brought us to school shivering. We had coats, some of us, and hung them in the cloakroom with our caps, hoping they would still be there when we left, for there was a good deal of stealing at St. Peter's, and you guarded your lunch, too, very carefully, the slices of bread and butter that our mother wrapped for us in newspaper.

It rained a lot still, and sometimes the cloakroom would smell like a laundry with all the damp clothes drying. The lights were on all day in school because the rain and the perpetual clouds brought early darkness. Sometimes, too, heavy fog rolled in, covering the streets like gray shrouds, so dense you could not see an inch in front of you. The headmaster would send us home early when this happened, and we would grope our way homeward like blind people, and now and then we'd be guided by the red bobbing lanterns on the back of some clop-clopping cart in front of us.

It was a relief to get home, to burst into the house, all of us simultaneously, to rush to the fire in the kitchen and thrust our hands toward the red-hot coals. And then to stand there letting our clothes dry and eat the slices of bread and jam that our mother had prepared for us.

The days were much shorter now. You no longer saw the people when they came home from the mills, the women in their striped petticoats and shawls and little bits of white fluff stuck in their hair, the men carrying their dinner pails wrapped in big red-and-white-spotted handkerchiefs. Darkness came on early, and yellow lights showed in all the houses as the workers came home. You simply heard the hurried clattering of their clogs, and then the doors opening and closing, and a bit after that smelled frying fish and chips and bacon and lard.

I was busy all the time, it seemed. Soon after tea was over, I was on my way to cheder with my two brothers and all the other Jewish lads from our street. We had to go every day after school. We were taught Jewish history and the Hebrew language, together with religion. We went together in a noisy, chattering group, carrying our little black Hebrew books that we were supposed to have studied. We loitered a lot along the way, peering in shop windows, kicking some empty can we'd found back and forth among us, and invariably Sam Roseman would treat us to his famous performance.

“One, two, three!”

As he counted, his right arm moved back and forth like the piston of a locomotive, his right knee was cocked upward, and at the last word he let go with a series of loud farts that made us double up with laughter.

There was still another delay as we came onto Chestergate Avenue. The mill itself was dark and silent, but from the grating in its sidewalk came a muted roaring sound accompanied by flashes of light. We could never resist going across to look down. We were gazing at the boiler room of the mill, and the furnace that was kept going all night. A big, brawny man naked to the waist, face blackened, was shoveling coal. He paused to look up at us and grin, the flames dancing behind him. He waved, and his lips moved, but we could not hear the words. We waved back, and stood watching fascinated until someone remembered that it was time to go.

At last, we came trooping into the cheder, guilty, blinking in the strong light. The rabbi stood waiting for us, warming his back against the fireplace, angry and impatient, the long cigarette holder in his hand with the cigarette almost burned down to the end.

“So here you are, finally,” he burst out. “Where have you been? Playing a little footer, perhaps? Smashing peoples' windows? Well, let's see how much Hebrew you know. Sit down.” He added contemptuously, “Scholars!”

We scrambled for our seats, glad this was all the reprimand we got. The benches were arranged in rows before the fireplace. This room might well have once been the fancy drawing room my sister Rose always dreamed about. It was a large room, airy and light during the day, with a high ceiling and a wide, ornate molding around the borders. Bow windows looked out onto what had once been a garden, with wooden seats in front of them. The marble fireplace took up almost one entire wall, and had a large mantelpiece. The floors, now dark and stained and worn, were probably the original oak floors.

It was redolent of an elegance that belonged to the Victorian era, and the aristocracy about which Rose always fantasized. It had given way to the musty smell of siddurim, and was filled these nights with the voices of a dozen or so young Jewish boys chanting Hebrew words, and the bellowing voice of a rabbi trying to drum knowledge of an ancient past into their heads.

Our lesson lasted about an hour, and during that time the poor rabbi must have aged far beyond his forty or so years. We tormented him endlessly, with the strange noises that Sam Roseman made, sending us into fits of suppressed laughter, with the spitballs that he and his friends threw at one another, but mostly with the mistakes that we made in our Hebrew. The rabbi moved among the benches with the cigarette holder in his hand and the cigarette smoldering, raging, shouting, pointing with a yellow tobacco-stained finger at some spot in the siddur, and sometimes boxing an ear when his rage became uncontrollable.

It must have been a tremendous relief to him when the hour of instruction was over. “Go home,” he'd say, his voice hoarse from shouting. “Go to your mothers and tell them I have done all I can, but I do not know how to perform miracles. Tell them only God can do that.”

I recall that as we rushed out he wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, and muttered slightly to himself. He had other troubles besides us. He had a son who was refusing to go to the synagogue.

         

SOONER OR LATER
that winter we all came down with a cold, sometimes two or three together, so that there was a constant sneezing and blowing of noses, and my mother was forever busy tearing up old bedsheets and turning them into handkerchiefs, or snot rags, as we called them.

My turn came, and mine was a bad one, with a burning fever that kept me in bed, and then, best of all, home from school for another few days after I got out of bed. I was not sorry. By this time I shared my brothers' fear and hatred of St. Peter's. I was glad to be home, and it was like the old days that I remembered so fondly, being with my mother all day, sitting on the floor near her playing with my few broken toys.

She was always busy and bustling about, especially now that she had her shop, and her long skirt with the apron over it would rustle as she hurried to answer a knock on the door that meant a customer.

I usually followed her around and sometimes went to the door with her when a knock came. I had learned by now that most of her customers came in during the early part of the afternoon, but less to buy than to sit and gossip. It had become a sort of clubroom for them, and some of them would buy a glass of the sour milk that my mother had begun to make and sell, and they would sip as they talked, and in this fashion they would while away a pleasant afternoon.

I think my mother loved these afternoons, and looked forward to them. It was an escape from some of the unhappiness of her life. Watching her, as I always did, finding a corner for myself when the women began to come in, and seeing the flush on her cheeks as she sat behind the counter with all her customers around her, some sipping at their sour milk, and the room buzzing with talk, I sensed that she was in her element. She had found something in the shop that was perhaps even more important to her than the little money she made out of it.

There she sat behind that counter, like a queen on her throne, with all her ladies-in-waiting gathered about her. She also made sour cream and potted cheese, and sold them as well as the faded fruits and vegetables. She'd had shelves built along the walls, and if it had not been for the Levines, she would have turned it into a Jewish grocery. But she would never have done that to the Levines, to whom she would always be grateful. Nevertheless, she had accomplished a great deal, and these afternoons were perhaps her biggest reward, the high spot of her day, in a rather sad life.

This particular day was bleak and cloudy. A sharp wind was blowing, and the women came in one by one huddled in their shawls and shivering. To their relief, my mother had built a fire in the shop. She didn't always do this, coal cost too much, but today was exceptionally cold, so she had splurged a little with her meager supply of coal, and the glow of the fire in the dimness of the room added to the coziness of the gathering.

I watched from my corner, hidden by a sack of potatoes on one side, and a sack of onions on the other. Fanny Cohen, my mother's closest friend and the first to arrive, was sitting on an upturned orange crate near the counter, a thin, bedraggled woman with hair hanging over her eyes, rocking her baby back and forth to keep it from crying and interfering with the talk going on.

They were jabbering away in a strange mixture of English, with a Lancashire accent, and Yiddish, with an occasional Russian or Polish word thrown in. I scarcely listened. The topics did not interest me. Because this was Thursday, the day Mrs. Zarembar went into the country for her chickens, there was much speculation as to the kind of chickens she would bring; then it was the high prices the kosher butcher was charging for his meat. From there they went on to the trouble the rabbi was having with his son who would not attend the synagogue, and then a rumor that one of the Harris girls was going out with a boy from Manchester. Right after this someone mentioned a name that made me prick up my ears.

“What about Sarah?” asked Mrs. Mittleman, a loud-voiced, aggressive woman who lived at the lower end of the street. “What's doing with her?”

I listened now.

“Yes,” someone else asked, “is she better?”

The questions may well have been directed at Mrs. Jacobs, a one-eyed woman who lived with her little humpbacked husband and retarded son Rafael in the house next to the Harrises, the one usually best informed on this subject.

At first, she shrugged, as if to ask why she should know more than anyone else. The fact that the walls separating our houses were paper-thin and you could hear everything that went on in the house next to you didn't mean that she was listening. She made this clear. “How should I know?” she said. “I see Sarah sometimes, and what else do I know?”

“Is she still sick or not?” insisted Mrs. Mittleman. “I hear she's sick, and I hear she isn't sick. So what's the true story?”

“I've seen her walking outside already,” volunteered Fanny Cohen, shaking her baby up and down this time instead of from side to side. “I saw her even today.”

The eyes turned questioningly to Mrs. Jacobs again, and still she said nothing, and Mrs. Mittleman exclaimed, “Today? In this weather? So how can she be sick?”

“And if she isn't sick, why isn't she going to work?” one other woman wanted to know.

It was puzzling, and it was up to Mrs. Jacobs to explain the matter. After a moment she burst out, “Why should she go to work? Why should she not go to work? Is she sick? Is she not sick? You think I have nothing to do all day except listen to them argue?”

“They argue?” said Mrs. Mittleman, her voice probing, demanding. “About what?”

“How should I know?” said Mrs. Jacobs irritably. “Who cares? Let them argue. So the father wants her back in the shop. The mother says no, she is not well enough yet. Sarah herself, all she wants to do is go out and get fresh air. The mother says the air is not good for her, she must lie on the sofa in the parlor. Sarah says this, the mother says that, the father says another thing. So it goes. You think they know what's best? I know. A long time ago I told them. Sarah needs a husband, not fresh air or a sofa in the parlor. But my Rafael is not good enough for them.”

An uncomfortable silence fell among them for a moment, and eyes glanced surreptitiously at one another. This situation was an old one, and they understood the bitterness that had crept into Mrs. Jacobs's tone. She could never see her son as others did, a gawky boy who said foolish things, and whose mouth dribbled like an old man's. Her attempts to make a match between him and Sarah had been going on for a long time.

“My son is a good religious boy,” she said, pursuing the matter still further. “He was bar mitzvahed like any other boy on the street, he goes to shul every Saturday, and he makes a living. So he doesn't operate a machine. He sweeps up and carries bundles onto the lorries, but he works steady and he brings home his pay every week, and what more can a girl want? You tell me.”

But no one said anything. No one wanted to get involved in her problem. The uncomfortable silence lasted still a moment longer until, to their relief, one woman whose eyes had strayed to the window cried out, “Ah, here comes the Zarembar woman.”

All eyes instantly went to the window, mine too. Yes, there she was, the fat little woman waddling her way up the street, struggling with her two bulging, squirming straw bags. Everyone noticed too how fast she seemed to be trying to walk.

“She must be in a hurry to get home,” someone murmured.

But they were all getting ready to follow her into her house. Those who had been drinking sour milk put their glasses down on the counter, and they all began pulling shawls over their heads. In another few moments the shop would be empty, but, to their surprise, instead of continuing up the street, she turned in at our house.

We heard the front door open and then close after her. She had never done this before, and everyone looked at one another with puzzled expressions. In a moment she appeared in the doorway. She must have deposited her two bags of chickens in the lobby, because her hands were free, and we could hear the faint cluckings behind her. She stood there surveying us all, turning her head from this side to that and murmuring faint greetings. Her cheeks were fiery red from the wind and cold, and she was rubbing her two hands together, perhaps from the same thing, or was it from a certain suppressed excitement that seemed to emanate from her?