The Credit Draper

Episode 19

Avram felt himself being pulled closer. “I know it has been difficult for you,” Papa Kahn went on. “Learning subjects in English while studying for your bar mitzvah could not have been easy. But you have a young mind and young minds absorb these things more quickly.

“Now, for tomorrow, are you sure you truly understand the portion of the law? It is the part the Shema prayer comes from.”

There was one phrase among all the others that had pricked at Avram’s consciousness.

It was a phrase that pushed him to grapple with concepts beyond his youthful knowledge, yet intuitively he knew that these were important thoughts.

“I don’t understand the part in the Shema where it says ‘et adoshem elokecha tira’.”

“Et adoshem elokecha tira,” Papa Kahn repeated. “And thou shalt fear the Lord thy God. What don’t you understand?”

“I don’t understand why God wants to frighten me.”

Papa Kahn smiled. “Such large thoughts for such a small boy.

“The Shema not only says you should fear God but you should also love Him. Fear and love together make respect.”

“But I don’t want the fear. Is love not enough?”

Refreshing

Again Papa Kahn smiled. “Imagine, Avram. Imagine God is the ocean. You can love the ocean, yes?

“Its beauty, its horizons, its taste, its smell, its refreshing quality. This love will make you want to be near the ocean, to protect it, to honour it.

“But the ocean can be fearful, too. It has its typhoon swells, its thunderous waves. That fear makes you want to respect the ocean.

“It makes you take care of strong currents. It keeps you on the right path.”

Avram recalled his journey on the steamship to Scotland and realised he had no love for the ocean.

He knew how a vessel could be tossed in its writhing belly, he knew the distance the waters could put between a boy and his mother, he knew the darkness in its depth that would be a hiding place for his most terrible dreams. He wanted to ask how he could love such an ocean, when Papa Kahn sighed.

“There is something else.”

Papa Kahn picked up the small box, spun it slowly around in his fingers.

“This is a gift,” he said, his voice drifting away. “This is a gift. From your mother.”

Avram took the box, ran his trembling fingers over the smooth, dark amber of its casing as if it were his mother’s face he was touching.

“Mother sends this?”

“For your bar mitzvah.”

“My mother sends this?” “Someone brought it a few hours ago. You were at school.”

“I don’t understand. Who brings this box?”

“Dmitry. That was what he told me. Dmitry. He was in a hurry. A seaman. He was between ships.

“He pressed the box into my hands. ‘Give this to the boy,’ he said. ‘From his mother. For his 13th birthday.’

“I begged him for more information, I even offered him money, but he said he knew nothing. He left quickly.”

“Dmitry.” Avram felt a panic rise behind his ribs, move up through his chest in a rush to beat at his ears, to threaten this new world he had carefully begun to construct.

Absence

It was a world where he had no mother for she was locked away in some compartment in his heart he had chosen not to enter

It was a world where he had no mother for she was locked away in some compartment in his heart he had chosen not to enter.

Yet it seemed his mother was still there, knocking at the walls of this vault, registering her absence in this gift.

She was not dead. And the ghost of her now began to stir in this compartment of memory.

God had indeed looked after her, this God whom he both feared and also could learn to love.

“There is a letter?”

“I’m sorry, Avram. There is nothing else.” Papa Kahn kneaded his eyes behind his spectacles and then went on.

“I do not know what to say to you. I am of course joyous she is alive, as you must be, but for her not to tell us what is happening, not to ask for you to... I just didn’t know what to say.

“You are like family to us. A son. A brother for Celia and Nathan. I just don’t know what to say.”

Avram was barely listening to Papa Kahn. With his nail he picked at the tiny clasp on the box, prising back the lid. Sitting on a bed of blue velvet gleamed a silver thimble.

He closed the door to Papa Kahn’s study behind him, walked around the hallway, cradling the box in his hand like he might do a young bird.

He didn’t know where to go or what to do. His mother was alive. But it was a fact that existed somewhere else. Not here, where she might as well be dead if she did not come for him.

He felt like throwing the box with its thimble away, then he changed his mind. He would show it to Celia when she came back.

Fitted neatly

He wandered into the cold kitchen, sat by the table, took the thimble out of its box. It fitted neatly on his index finger.

“They say tomorrow’s your bassmissva.” Mary stood at the doorway with a bucket in one hand, a mop in the other.

“They say tomorrow ye’ll be a man. Bein’ a man’s no such a great thing.”

“Go away.”

“Go away, is it now. Now ye’ve got some English words on yer tongue. Now yer the Kahn’s lovely boy, ye think ye can talk to me like that.”

She put down the mop and the bucket which slopped grey water on to the floor, moved towards him, forcing him to scrape back in his chair.

“Leave me alone.”

“What’s that ye’ve got there? A bit of jewellery, is it? Been stealing some of Madame’s jewellery, have ye?”

“I do not steal. It’s mine. From my mother.”

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