The Credit Draper Episode 35

Mary sniffed the air just before they reached the close. “You can help me mangle this stuff,” she said. “But dinnae hang it out in the green after, though. I think it’s going to rain.”

And she was right. Just after the work with the mangle, the rain came down in buckets. Mary went upstairs to her room in Uncle Mendel’s flat to close the windows.

He was left to take down all the dry clothes from the kitchen pulley, hang up the fresh wash.

Celia came in, saw the newly-plucked dry stack in the basket, told him to put it in the bedroom for ironing. He did as he was told then remained to finish his homework by Nathan’s bedside.

He propped his schoolbook among the bedclothes and tried to work out the mathematical problems in his copybook. Nathan was asleep, his breathing coming in a light snore.

Celia worked quietly in a rhythm with the steam iron.

“What’s that you’re doing?” she asked. “Algebra.”

He enjoyed the subject, the combination of numbers and letters offering up a different language, the discovery of unknown value through the knowledge of other values, the puzzle of it all.

New concepts

He could almost feel his mind visibly expand to accommodate the new concepts, like a muscle training and straining to lift a heavier weight.

Celia sniffed. “That’s all that stuff with ‘x’ and ‘y’ in it. I don’t see the point, really.”

As if to emphasise her statement, she slammed the iron hard down on one of Papa Kahn’s shirts stretched out on the board.

There was a warm spittle of hiss from the device which looked too large and heavy for her thin arms.

Her hair was up under a headscarf, her Paisley-patterned apron hugged in her waist, spread out tight over her hips.

She muttered to herself as she worked, fussing with her fingers over buttons that had unthreaded loose or a stretch of material that wouldn’t sit just right across the board.

Her face was flushed from the heat and her brow was damp where it had crinkled into a frown over her task.

She was only a few months older yet he thought how grown-up she had become since Madame Kahn had been arrested.

So efficient. So bossy. So like her mother. “I think you’d be good at it,” he said. “Maybe I would. But I’ve got other plans.” “What other plans?”

“Plans for when Mother gets back.” “You’ll still have to work here.”

“No I won’t. Women are going out to work now. They’re in the offices and the factories. That’s one good thing about the war.”

“There’s nothing good about the war.” Almost as if in agreement, Nathan let out a groan and shifted in his bed, knocking Avram’s schoolbook to the floor. Avram turned his attention to the figure twisted out from under the bedclothes.

Nathan seemed to have wasted away to nothing. He ate little and sometimes Celia had to force-feed him.

The skin across his collarbone where his nightgown had pulled down was dry and thin. His wrists hung out of his sleeves like chicken bones.

Suffering

Avram was certain Rabbi Lieberman was right. Nathan did have the blood of a lamed vav, pouring the suffering of the world into his veins.

And there was plenty of suffering around. Avram read the papers every day, sometimes adding up the published lists of the dead, mouthing quietly to himself the names of these men who had become no more than a two or three-word item in a newspaper column.

The totals were atrocious. Reports for the last three months showed 350,000 Allied soldiers killed at the Somme, along with some 650,000 Germans.

There were one-and-half million Jews starving in Russia. Together that was three times the population of the city of Glasgow, half the population of Scotland.

He tried to picture the streets of the Gorbals littered with the bodies of the starving and the dead, and shivered at the image.

He thought that if he kept the newspapers away from the bedroom, Nathan would be unaware of what was going on. But then he realised that if Nathan was indeed related to a lamed vav, he would surely be able to feel the suffering without having to know about it.

Somehow the pain would sink into him from the atmosphere, through radiowaves, from silent screams or the reports of angels.

Even for Avram, it wasn’t really necessary to read the newspapers to know about the tragedies occurring in mainland Europe.

He could just go out into the streets to witness the men without limbs, with scarred faces, with the blank expressions of those who had seen too much and now only wanted to see too little.

There was no rush to sign up for King and Country now. The war hadn’t ended before Christmas.

It hadn’t ended before nearly three Christmases. Conscription had been introduced.

Calculation

Somehow the pain would sink into him from the atmosphere, through radiowaves, from silent screams or the reports of angels

Fifty thousand men were needed a month. He made the calculation in his head.

Unless the war ended, in seven months all the new recruits would be dead at the Somme.

Celia picked up a shirt, tucked the neck under her chin, folded it just right.

“I want to be a clippie,” she announced. “Of course you do.” He rolled his eyes at her then tried to visualise Celia in a conductress’ uniform.

Black Watch tartan skirt, Corporation green jacket, her badge, the whirring ticket machine. “Papa Kahn would never allow it.”

“Makes no difference. I’m still going to do it.”

“You’re too young. You need to be at least eighteen to work with the public, handling money.”

More on Monday.