The Invisible Wall (20 page)

Freddy looked with me, and said, “That's where we live, down there in that smoke. It's been there all me life. It'll always be there, I suppose. I went to war to save it. Only I couldn't save me'self.”

We turned, and I wheeled him into the park. It was early spring. It was a bit chilly and cloudy, but the buds were beginning to show on the trees and bushes. The grass was very green, and it had recently been cut and there was a sweet smell in the air. Freddy drank it in and sighed a bit. Birds were chattering about us.

“Ah, but it smells good,” he said. “That's what I came for, to smell the grass right after it had been cut, and hear the birds singing. It's all so clean, isn't it? There aren't many clean places left in this dirty world of ours. I tell you something else, 'arry. It makes me think of all the girls I've loved here. So many of them, I can't count 'em. I remember this same sweet smell that used to come up from the grass when I lay with them in the darkness, and the stars shining overhead.”

Again, it was as if he were talking more to himself than to me, and I said nothing as I pushed him along the path. The park was almost deserted. We went past a thick grove of trees, and I noticed one big golden tree that stood out among the others. He noticed it too, and he gave a little chuckle.

“That was my favorite spot, that willow. Its branches spread out like a ladies' ballroom costume. It's the most beautiful thing you ever saw, and when you get inside that tree it's almost like being in a cathedral. There's something holy about it, I swear. It's big and tall inside, and you feel like you're a million miles away from everything. Trouble is, you can't use it when summer's over. It sheds branches as well as leaves, and it's like somebody dying, and there's nothing left but a skeleton. But I suppose everything's got to end, eh, 'arry?” Then he added, “Take me back, will you, lad? I'm getting tired.”

He sounded tired, too. He started to help me again by pushing on the wheels, this time doing so much better than before that we rolled quickly, and soon reached the entrance again and went outside to the top of the hill.

There he made me stop, and he looked down the hill for quite some time. He seemed to be brooding over something, and I waited until he was ready to go down. Finally, when he did speak, he said rather quietly, “'arry, I want you to do something for me now. Will you?”

“Yis,” I said.

“Go back there into the park. I think I lost my handkerchief. Go back there and look for it, will you?”

“Yis,” I said.

I thought somehow it was a bit strange. I had not seen him use a handkerchief, and if he had dropped it I would have seen it. I did what he asked just the same. At least, I got as far as a few yards beyond the entrance, and then something—I don't know what it was—something made me stop and turn around. My heart almost jumped into my throat. I couldn't believe what I was seeing at first. Freddy was starting to maneuver his chair down the hill, pushing hard on the wheels with his hands.

I rushed back, yelling. “Freddy, wait for me!”

He must have heard me, but he paid no attention, and went on rolling down the hill. I ran after him, frantic, but I was too late. Once the wheelchair had gathered momentum it went faster than I could. I stopped in horror, watching. Freddy had no need now to use his hands. The chair raced down the steep incline, and just as it got to the bottom I saw the rear end tilt upward, as if one of the wheels might have struck an obstacle, and Freddy's half-body flew out. Quite distinctly I heard a sickening thump as his head struck the ground. The chair rolled over him, and he lay there still. I remember hearing my own screams as I rushed down toward him.

Chapter Nine

THE HARD TIMES BEGAN AFTER THE WAR, I REMEMBER. THE CLATTERING OF
clogs down the street in the early morning was no longer as loud or as brisk. Sometimes there was none. The military was no longer ordering uniforms, so trade had slowed. The tailoring shops were idled just as the mills were, and the men and the boys and girls who worked there stayed home, and the men sat outside their houses and smoked.

With my father, however, there was little change. He came and went as he always had, sitting at the table alone for his dinner, head bent low, shoveling food into himself. Then, abruptly pushing his chair back with a scraping sound and rising to get his coat hanging on the back of the scullery door, and then charging out as always with one sleeve dangling behind him. Off to the pub. Where he got his money was his business.

He gave none to my mother Saturday afternoon. There was none, he said, and so my mother had to struggle as best she could. Her little shop had dwindled to almost nothing. The shelves and bins were practically empty. Not having any money, she could not buy any fresh produce, and even if she did people on the street did not have money to buy. She resorted to her old method of getting new stock, crawling under Pollit's fruit stand and foraging for half-rotted fruits and vegetables.

I went with her often on these missions, and even crawled under the stand with her several times now that I was big, ten years old, almost eleven. I remember the smell of the half-fermented apples and oranges and the other things, and the mush that got onto my hands and face. I remember too the flushed look of triumph on my mother's face when we were able to fill our two straw bags.

“Oh, aren't we lucky,” she'd say.

Pollit took very little from her. He'd have given them to her for nothing if she'd let him, but she still wouldn't, still too proud. He shrugged and pretended to haggle with her for the best possible price. Off we'd go then, and this time I'd be lugging the two bags for her, and saying, when she wanted to help me, “No, I can do it, Mam, I can do it by meself.”

She was not as strong as before. She seemed to have grown heavy around the middle and walked more slowly. In the house she did not rush to answer a knock when it came at the door, even when it was the postman with a letter perhaps from America, and you did not hear the rustle of her skirt as she whirled around to go to the door. I sensed something different about her, and the way sometimes people spoke to her, dropping their voices to a whisper if I was around, something I did not understand.

It would take a little longer before I did, a year or so more before Zalmon would take me and several other boys around the corner and into a dark entry to explain the mystery of life.

One night I woke up to hear a baby crying. I listened, startled, thinking I was dreaming. But no, it was real, and it came from the room next to us, the one where my mother and father slept. Joe and Saul were awake, too, listening. They slept on the other end of the bed, and their feet protruded onto my end and sometimes into my face. They were whispering to each other.

I said, “There's a baby in Mam's room.”

Saul said scornfully, “Don't you think we know it?”

“Mam just had it,” Joe informed me.

I was a bit taken aback. Then I asked, “How?”

Saul screamed with laughter. Joe chuckled. He was a little more restrained, and more tolerant toward me. “How d'you think?” he said.

“He doesn't know,” Saul said with the same contempt.

I didn't then, but I didn't ask any more questions. I simply accepted the wonder and excitement of it all. I looked at it with wide eyes the next day in my mother's room. She was lying in bed, looking wan, suckling the baby at her breast. I had seen other women doing this before with their babies when they came into the shop. Fanny Cohen had had a new one not many weeks before. But this was the first time I had seen my mother suckling a baby. I felt strangely awkward, embarrassed, and turned my head away. My mother's tired face took on an amused expression.

“Don't you like the baby?” she asked.

“Yis.”

“Then why don't you look at him?”

I turned my head slowly, and my mother may have guessed the cause of my embarrassment and put her breast away inside her nightgown. I could see the baby's face more clearly now. It was red and wrinkled and looked as if it might be going to cry. It was making faint sounds like a clucking chicken.

“He looks like you,” my mother said.

“Is it a boy?”

“Yes,” she said.

“What's its name?”

“We're calling him Sidney.”

“Why?”

“That was the name of your father's uncle who died a long time ago. You always call a baby after someone who died.”

“Why?”

“Because you do. It's the custom.”

“Aren't we going to America?” I asked suddenly.

She seemed puzzled. “Yes, of course we are,” she said. “Why not? What's the baby got to do with it?”

“How can you go to America with a baby?”

“Oh, it's easy. A baby can go just like anybody else. When he's a bit older, of course. You'll have to write another letter for me to America. They'll want to know about the baby, and, who knows, maybe that'll help hurry them up a bit sending for us.”

I believe she really thought that. She was always seeing people through her own eyes and seeing herself mostly and attributing to them her own gentleness and unselfishness. She was certain they would share her joy in the new baby, and feel all the more need to help her.

I know I certainly believed it myself, and was only too anxious to start writing the letter. Perhaps I would have done so then, except that suddenly we were both aware of someone coming into the room. We both turned our heads and looked toward the door, and were startled to see my father standing there.

His usually heavy footsteps had been quiet for once, and we had not heard him come up the stairs. He stood there looking down at the floor, his face sullen and scowling as always, not saying anything for a moment, then muttered, “How are you feeling?”

I saw the surprise come on my mother's face, and I felt the same thing. I had never before heard him ask this of her. Nor had she probably. She did not answer his question, but spoke to me quietly, saying, “'arry, go downstairs and play.”

I went, somehow feeling extraordinarily happy. There was peace in our house for once, something I had never known before.

A week later we had the bris. The guests filled our kitchen, and because there were few chairs most of them had to stand. My father had put a bottle of whiskey on the table, and poured a few small glasses, then put the cork on tightly and guarded it for the rest of the time with glaring eyes. There was also sponge cake my mother had managed to bake for the occasion in spite of her confinement. Lily was in charge.

She bustled about serving refreshments. She had been in charge of the house as she always had been when my mother gave birth to one of us, from the time when Lily was a child herself. I don't think she minded too much this time. It got her away from the drudgery of the tailoring shop. She rushed about in the kitchen with her cheeks flushed. She still wore her hair long, as she had done when she was going to school. It swished behind her as she swung from place to place among the people.

The rabbi came at last to perform the circumcision. This was the new young rabbi who had taken the place of our old one. There had been a great deal of consternation among some of the members of the congregation when he first came. He was not only very young, but clean-shaven. That was what had disturbed many people, especially the old women. They had whispered about it in my mother's shop, and I had heard them ask what sort of rabbi could he be without a beard? Wasn't shaving with a razor sinful?

There had been arguments, some defending him. Mrs. Zarembar was one of these, but because he had come to live with her as a boarder she had assumed an almost parental attitude toward him. What was wrong with not having a beard? she wanted to know. What was right with it? Mrs. Mittleman flung back at her. Then, oddly enough, Mrs. Harris had taken Mrs. Zarembar's side, defending the young rabbi's right to be clean-shaven, and because she was an authority on such matters, the decision was in the young man's favor. Nothing more was said about his lack of a beard.

Besides, he had come to be well liked, especially by those with unmarried daughters. It was perhaps one reason Mrs. Harris had defended him. She still had three daughters waiting for husbands to come along, and she had already had the young rabbi to dinner in her house. So had other families, except ours. I think this was the first time that he had come to our house.

Not the first time, though, that he had seen Lily. He had asked me about her in cheder. How old was she? Was she engaged to anyone, or anything like that? He had smiled a bit awkwardly when he had asked that, and I saw a little color come into his pale face. It was a rather long, ascetic face, and he wore metal-rimmed spectacles. He spoke with a pronounced Russian accent. He had fled from Russia and the Bolsheviks not too long ago, barely escaping with his life, it was believed.

The congregation had decided that the former rabbi's house up the park was much too big and extravagant for a young, unmarried rabbi, and had arranged to board him at Mrs. Zarembar's house. One of the reasons for selecting her was that the Friday chickens would be close at hand and he could slaughter them in her backyard. The arrangement had worked out well thus far. The chickens were slaughtered immediately, thus saving us a trip to the synagogue. Mrs. Zarembar was pleased with her new boarder, and proud as well. There was no mistaking that as she arrived with him at our house that day. She came waddling in beside him, her rosy cheeks flushed a still deeper hue, the proud smirk on her face.

“Here he is,” she announced, as if she were presenting a new flock of chickens to the company.

They had all been waiting for him, and a respectful silence fell over the gathering. They were all wearing their best clothes for the occasion. Fanny Cohen had brought her newest baby along and was holding it in her arms and bouncing it up and down a bit to keep it from crying. The rabbi nodded and bowed slightly to each one, murmuring a greeting, and then his eyes came to rest on Lily, who was flitting about in the background. She had not paid much attention to his entrance.

He stood there, his eyes following her as she moved about with a tray in her hands, and seemed oblivious for a moment of the rest of them. My mother had come downstairs with the baby a short time before this and was holding the baby in her arms, and I saw her eyes go from the rabbi to Lily.

“Lily,” she called out, “please bring the rabbi some refreshment.”

Lily went over to him with the tray, and he took a small piece of sponge cake, and smiled at her.

“I don't think we've met before,” he said.

“No, we haven't,” said Lily.

“I'm Rabbi Oslov,” he said. “My first name is Abraham. And yours?”

“Lily,” she said.

They were all looking, watching, listening. The room was very quiet. My mother's eyes were shining. The rabbi was smiling and did not seem to know what to say further, but his eyes were fixed on Lily. She herself stood there calmly, not saying anything, not having anything to say. He had looked at her before this, I know. I had seen him once standing in the doorway of Mrs. Zarembar's house as he was about to go in. Lily had just come out of our house, and he had been watching her as she walked down the street. He had then come into our shop several times to buy fruit, and while conversing pleasantly with my mother had kept glancing around as if in search of something. It had not escaped my mother's attention, but she had said nothing. She said nothing now.

The silence in the room was broken by my father's voice, rough and savage. He had settled himself in a corner of the room, away from people, and had been drinking his whiskey.

“What the bloody 'ell are we all waiting for?” he shouted.

The room stirred, and the rabbi roused himself, laughed and said, “Ah, yes. We have a circumcision to perform. Where is the young victim?”

My mother brought the baby forward, and everyone gathered around. The rabbi began the prayers, and everyone joined in. He then produced a small case from his pocket and opened it. The knife lay inside, very shiny. The baby in my mother's arms began to cry immediately, and Fanny Cohen's baby in the background took up the same thing, so there was a howling of two babies while the rabbi expertly snipped off the foreskin.

I watched fascinated and saw the blood come out of the tiny penis, which the rabbi staunched quickly with a towel, but not before a stream of urine shot up into his face. He gasped and laughed and looked about for a towel, and it was Lily who handed it to him quickly and he wiped himself.

He was still laughing as he handed the towel back to her, saying, “God has strange ways of speaking to us. It could have been His reprimand for my delaying the ritual.”

“Perhaps it was the baby's reprimand,” she said. “He may not have liked what you did to him.”

“That,” said the rabbi gently, “he should not have objected to. It has made him a Jew, something that he will be proud of someday, don't you think?”

Lily gave no answer, and I think this must have troubled the rabbi a bit. But then there were other things about her that troubled him, the most important one being that she did not attend the synagogue.

He used to ask my mother about it when he came into the shop on the pretext of wanting to buy some of her fruit. The question always embarrassed her. She had no answer to give; she didn't know why, and she was worried about it. Lily had not been going for a long time, and there were other things that bothered my mother too, like reading strange books that she would not let any of us see, and going to lectures and meetings of various sorts and refusing to explain what they were about.