The Credit Draper

Episode 34

The rabbi pointed a gloved finger heavenwards. “Shema yisrael adoshem elokenu, adshem echod. Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” Then he turned his finger on Avram. “Are you meshugge?”

The rabbi’s histrionics no longer impressed him. Back before his bar mitzvah, the pointed finger may have intimidated him into submission in the same way as Lord Kitchener’s poster persuaded troops to enlist for the Front.

But now, with the war into its third year and so many hundreds of thousands of lives lost, Avram’s confidence in the authority of God and his earthly servants had eroded to the point of questioning everything he had been taught.

“It’s just that it seems God loved David so much,” he said.

“This is true. David was an eesh ahoov. A beloved man.”

“But he broke two of God’s Commandments, rebbe?”

“And what Commandments were those?”

Unsure

“Adultery.” Avram said the word hesitantly unsure of the nature of a sin he assumed could only be committed by adults.

“Go on.”

“And then he had Bathsheba’s husband killed by sending him to the front line.”

“That was Uriah. Uriah the Hittite. And, and …?”

“Is that not murder?”

The rabbi began to fiddle with the straps of his briefcase. “That is not for us to judge. Nu? What’s the point? Get to the point.” “Why did God treat him so kindly?” “What do you mean, ‘kindly’?” “Why did He allow David a life full of glory, when he was a sinner against the Commandments?”

“Na, na, na, na. God was not so kind to David. Their first child – the child of David and Bathsheba – died in infancy. That was the punishment. The death of the child.”

“But after the first child they had another child, Solomon, who became a famous king. And look what God did to Moses when all he did was strike a rock …”

“Moses, David. David, Moses. What is it with you and Moses?”

“But Moses …”

“I will hear no more of this. It is not for you to question the ways of the Lord.”

That night, from under the warmth of his bedclothes, Avram heard Papa Kahn return from the shop. There was the double-locking of the door, then the slice of light into the bedroom as he paused to check on the breathing of his son.

Then came the clanking of pots in the kitchen in the search for the food that Celia had left him, the scraping of a chair on the stone floor, the sound of grumblings, the smell of tobacco from the one cigarette before bedtime.

There was a time when Avram would have risen from his bed to join Papa Kahn at the kitchen table, to stand in the crook of his arm and ask him if indeed there were two Gods. But he let the lights go out and the flat settle into silence.

Teasing

Avram liked the steamie. He liked the scald and hissing boil of the place, the bubbling vats, the scrubbed cleanliness, the stench of carbolic. But as the only male among the maids and housewives, he hated the teasing.

“Here’s your boyfriend come to get you,” one of the women cackled.

Mary strutted out of the boiling mist. Her face was blotched red, her hair matted in strands to her cheeks. Sweat stained her dress in a yoke above her breasts. She placed a hand on a bony hip cocked in her teaser’s direction.

“I need more of a man than that to satisfy me. And a rich one at that.”

“You know what they say about these young ’uns,” responded the teaser. “Plenty of powder in their guns.” Other women laughed.

“Master’s son, Mary,” another voice chided. “Don’t go fouling yer own nest.”

Avram felt the shirt clinging to his back from the humidity and the heat of his own embarrassment.

“Come on,” he pleaded. “Let’s go.” “He ain’t the Master’s real son,” Mary said. She looked straight at him. “So I ain’t be fouling my own nest.”

With a tilt of her head, she indicated a large basket piled high with whites. “That’s ours.”

He took one handle, waited for Mary to pull her cardigan tight around herself then pick up the other side of the basket. After the steamie’s concentrated heat and viscous smell, he breathed easier in the outside chill.

It was only a couple of streets to home, a journey he tried to walk in silence, letting Mary babble out a mouthful of complaints about the housekeeping if she had to.

He sensed matters between them had changed since Madame Kahn’s departure. Despite her threats, the tension was more between Mary and Celia now.

He almost detected a softening in her attitude towards him. She never touched him and if she would have, he had promised himself he would hit her back.

Not unpleasant

But after the first child they had another child, Solomon, who became a famous king. And look what God did to Moses...

The last few months had seen him sprout taller too, putting his height on a par with her. There was down growing on his face and between his legs, and a feeling towards her growing inside himself that was not entirely unpleasant.

“I think you’ve got eyes for that cow,” Celia had accused.

“Away with you.”

“You want to go roamin’ in the gloamin’ with her. I can tell.” Celia burst into a teasing sing-song.

“Roamin’ in the gloamin’ on the bonnie banks o’ Clyde. Roamin’ in the gloamin’ with Mary at Avram’s side …”

“I hate her,” he said.

“You’ve got a funny way of showing it. You’re always looking at her.”

And when he thought about it, so he was. Sometimes he would watch her working, the hem of her skirt retreating up the firm calf of her green woollen stockings as she reached for the pulley, or the heaving of her breasts as she sat in a squat on a stool to breathlessly scrub clothes on the washboard.

He watched Celia too. But in a way that was different.

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.