The Credit Draper

Episode 4

Again on her way out, Mary stopped, drew herself close to him. Again she grabbed the same stinging cheek with her knuckles, twisted the flesh. This time the pain was worse and he struggled not to cry out. She stepped back, humming to herself, rocking her head from side to side.

She moved closer and he felt her hands on his abdomen, her fingers crawling under his jumper to lift the shirt from inside his waistband.

He flinched from the coarse cold touch of her fingers on the flesh of his belly as they struggled with his buttons.

“Mary,” Madame Kahn shouted. He kicked out, sending the girl tumbling to the floor. But quick, she was on her feet again, smoothing down the front of her apron, curtsying before her mistress.

Madame Kahn snapped a few words at her servant before sending her out of the room. She then told him to get undressed and take a bath.

Avram was still shaking when Madame Kahn left, but he somehow managed the unwieldy buttons of his shirt. He stripped off the rest of his clothes, eased himself down into the scalding relief of the water in the tub.

New terrors

A gritty soap had been left for him and he rubbed hard at the grime of the last few days wishing his mother was there to wash his back, to soothe and comfort him from these new terrors.

As the water cooled he laid back to soak, surprised to recall that it was only early this same morning that his steamship had docked in this foreign land.

He remembered clinging to the deck railings, peering into the fog as the ship had stumbled up-river with thin-bellied seagulls squawking at the stern.

He realised he had no idea what kind of country this Scotland was. Only that he had emerged here, into this room, out of a river of mist and a tunnel of tenements.

He nipped his nose closed and let himself sink down slowly into the tub, feeling the water test his lips for entrance, massage his eyelids, block his ears.

In the black silence, he saw his weeping mother disentangle herself from his arms then push him away.

His fingers had tried to claw at her jacket but Dmitry’s strong arm had swept him on board.

When he had been released on deck, he ran back to the gangplank but his mother had already disappeared into the darkness. This darkness.

He pushed himself up from under the water, kneaded his eyes open to witness a young girl about his age tapping a finger on the side of the tub.

She wore a blue cotton smock, her hair tucked up in a headscarf except for a few dark curls escaped around her temples. With a tilt of her head to her shoulder, she stared unabashed at his nakedness.

“Celia,” she said, pointing at her chest. She then swivelled her finger menacingly at him. He told her his name.

She placed the finger into the gap of her open mouth. “Avram. English?”

When he shook his head, she folded her arms in annoyance.

Then, as if contemplating all the wonderful possibilities his lack of understanding could present, she giggled.

He ducked under the water and when he re-emerged, he pointed at her. “Celia. Russki?”

She shook her head and it was now his turn to mock her. She strutted around the tub, trailing a finger along its rim, causing him to twist his head in pursuit.

She began to go faster, dragging her hand in the tub, then dipping in deeper to scoop water into his face. He splashed back.

Shrieking, she ran faster, slipping and sliding around the bath. He ducked under the water again, but when he brought his head back to the surface she had gone.

Strange world

Avram liked the way Celia held his hand. No girl had ever done that before.

Just taken his hand in hers, easy as you like, suddenly a feeling of connection to another human being in this strange and alien world.

So comforting, those tiny white fingers clasped warmly around his own as he followed her to the top landing of their close.

There, he managed to grasp through her poor Yiddish and her gestures that when she was in position, she would call out his name from the landing below.

He was to run down after her, try to catch her.

“You must shout the game’s special words,” she instructed, so close he could smell her breath.

He wondered if it was the bicarbonate of soda that gave her such a sweet fragrance. “What are they?”

Her eyes darted at him in excitement. “I. Did. It.”

“I. Did. It.”

“Good. Again. But faster.”

“I did it.”

“Perfect. Now, stay.”

Screamed

Then, as if contemplating all the wonderful possibilities his lack of understanding could present, she giggled

He clambered on to the bannister, watched her skip down the stairway. She rang the doorbell of one flat, then the other.

“Avram,” she screamed up the stairwell. “Who did it?”

“I did it, I did it,” he screamed.

He flew down the stairs after her, ignoring the angry neighbours roused to their doorways until an old woman on the ground floor blocked his flight with the snap of a broom handle across his path.

She grabbed him hard with a wizened hand, twisted his ear until he cried out. Then she led him to the Kahn’s flat across the passage.

“Not only did he do it,” she complained. “He even shouts out he did it. ‘I did it, I did it.’

“This is what he says. What kind of meshugge child do you have here?”

“But Mrs Carnovsky,” Papa Kahn protested. “The boy can’t speak a word of English.”

More tomorrow.

The Credit Draper is the first in a trilogy by J David Simons. He has written five novels and is published by Saraband. His work can be purchased at saraband.net