Another Year in Africa Read online

  ‘Nonsense. There may be hotheads among them but has there ever been a pogrom here?’

  ‘What do you think the Greyshirts are planning, a Purim party?’

  ‘So, where’s it better?’

  ‘Where’s it better he asks,’ Hershl appealed to the ceiling. ‘Berka, we need a home of our own, without Aliens Acts and without anyone’s kind permission to exist.’

  ‘Spare me the Zionism. Bought any good stands in the sea lately?’

  Hershl laughed, not without embarrassment. I shall die in Jerusalem, he predicted when he argued about Zionism with Berka. That I can believe, Berka would reply. To live there is another matter. Emissaries from Palestine had an easy time with Hershl. Two years earlier an imposing man with a dark flowing beard and side curls had sold Hershl a stand in Palestine. A few months later he discovered it was situated a mile off the coast of Jaffa, in the sea.

  ‘Nu, in Lithuania I was a Hebrew teacher,’ Hershl said. ‘Here I am a baker. In Palestine I’ll become a fisherman. Remember how furious Faigel was? She doesn’t understand how I feel about Palestine. Buying trees, making an annual contribution to Zionist funds, sending other people, that she doesn’t mind. But the idea of settling there is beyond her comprehension.’

  ‘And mine. It’s too remote and strange to me. How’s the family?’

  ‘Fine. Daniel starts school on Monday.’

  ‘So does Ruthie. It’s a pity they don’t play together. It’d help if Ruth had friends her own age.’

  ‘Daniel’s also shy. Children of immigrant parents have a hard time. Torn between different ways of life. If we lived in Palestine…’

  ‘There he goes again,’ Berka said walking towards the door. ‘I live in the present and you live in an impossible dream of the future. It’s better, I suppose, than living in the past like our Dovidke. Come here, Hershl. Look at him standing there at his window, dreaming of the old country no doubt, where the fields were greener and the fruit sweeter.’

  ‘He often stands like that,’ Hershl said looking up at Dovid Erlich at his workshop window over the road, gazing sightlessly into the distance. ‘He’s got problems. Not much work coming in, mostly alterations. And Sheinka is a nagging wife.’

  ‘Is there another kind?’ Berka asked.

  ‘Poor Ruthie. She’s caught in the middle. They can’t be easy parents to live with. I wonder what went wrong? Sheinka was a lovely woman when they came out from Lithuania eight years ago. A little melancholic perhaps, but charming. She’s grown bitter over the last few years.’

  Berka was looking up at Dovid. From his first floor workshop, he thought enviously, he can see over the ridge of the hill where the sun will soon set. And he’s not even aware of what he’s seeing. Berka turned to leave the bakery.

  ‘Have a good sabbath, Hershl. Come over and kibbitz on Sunday night. Leib and I have arranged a game of bloff. Low stakes.’

  He shook Hershl’s floury hand warmly. He loved the man; he renewed Berka’s faith in humanity.

  Main Street was shining after the rain. A tram car clambered heavily up the hill, packed with people returning from work. Their faces looked soft and warm in the golden light. Berka loved them all. Even that thief Steinberg who gave short weight in his butchery; and Chidrawi, the swarthy Syrian who was arranging a pyramid of yellow peaches in his window; and Levin the outfitter who stood in his doorway, a tape measure around his neck. And all those children outside the fish and chips shop watching wistfully as Ronnie Davis sprinkled vinegar over someone else’s chips. He even felt a fleeting affection for the miser Pinn who owned the second-hand shop. His wife stood in the doorway, fluffing her hair this way and that, before embarking on what must be a two-hour journey home. She stopped off all along Main Street, garnering the news of the day, which she then embellished and disseminated among the housewives of First Avenue. She often knew better than they what was happening in the house next door. Some people were entirely unlovable.

  Berka looked into the dark interior of Nathan’s Drapery Store where his daughter Raizel worked. She was probably cashing up now. She had worked for the Nathans for four years, since she matriculated. At first she was a counter hand, measuring out elastic, hair ribbons and dress material. Today she practically ran the business. Mrs. Nathan spent most of her time in the city, drinking tea at the Corner Lounge, or walking about from shop to shop. Getting ideas for the trade, she called it. Mr. Nathan was almost blind. My eyes, he called Raizel. My heart, Berka murmured as he passed the shop.

  The barbershop next to Nathan’s was crowded with miners. Not, God forbid, having haircuts, but placing bets for the dog races.

  Friday Night is Wanderers Night,

  Night for Greyhound Racing.

  read a poster on the wall. Next to it hung a framed picture of water-waved ladies. And Wednesday night was Wembley Night, yet another night for dog racing.

  Berka walked resolutely past the hotel bar. The Siren-sounds of clinking glasses and loud laughter would not tempt him tonight.

  From the bar onwards Main Street ran a flat course for half a mile towards the large bluegum plantation which flanked the suburb on the west. The plantation stretched from the end of Main Street southwards towards the mine dumps. Below the dumps was a small dam into which water was pumped from underground. If Berka had seen snow-capped mountains, pine forests and an inland lake as he turned the corner from Main Street into First Avenue, he would not have been happier. He remembered when the first saplings had been planted. He had watched the mine dump grow as the coco-pans crawled up its sandy slopes depositing yet another load of finely crushed rock onto the chalky hill. And next to it the yellow slimes dam also grew slowly, hardening towards its final shape as a truncated pyramid.

  He never tired of this constant yet ever-changing scene. On rainy days the dump stained deep yellow, the trees washed a lighter green and the leaden skies reflected dully in the cyanic dam. Under the clear winter skies the dam sparkled like a jewel, and the whiteness of the dump was blinding. He loved it most at sunset, however, when the dump became a mountain of gold dust and the dam liquid amber.

  They could keep their gold bars in their vaults. He was satisfied with the refuse. From the top of First Avenue he surveyed his kingdom. King of the Rubbish Heaps, he thought with a smile. Beyond the veld which separated Mayfontein from the mine, the wheels of the headgear turned ceaselessly and the stentorian voice of the crushers echoed throughout the suburb, day and night, week after week, year after year, until it seemed to be the very breath of the suburb. He breathed in unison with it.

  At this time of the day the rows of the red-bricked semi-detached houses glowed like live coals and the whole suburb caught fire. Only the plane trees cast a cooling shadow across the hot sandy roads. Yanka the fruit vendor came into view, driving his horses hard in his effort to reach home before the sabbath. Billowing clouds of red dust rose in his wake. Like the cumulus clouds which hung over the dump, like the dust raised by Boers on commando.

  ‘This is my world,’ Berka sighed as he walked down First Avenue towards his house, ‘and I’m glad of it.’

  2

  ‘I should’ve had that drink!’ Berka looked regretfully up First Avenue then back again to the veranda where Yenta, her ample bosom resting on its polished ledge, was waiting for him. Her hair was combed and she was wearing her best brown dress. That could mean one of two things: that she wanted a favour from him in which case she would have overlooked his beery breath, or that she had unpleasant news, in which case he would need a drink.

  ‘Benjamin’s in for the week-end,’ she greeted him apologetically. ‘He’s come to see a doctor. Please be patient with him, Berrala. He’s a sick man.’

  Berrala. A man had as many names as his wife had moods. He was Berka when she talked about him to others; Berra when she was annoyed with him which was most of the time; Bernard when he had been to the bar with his non-Jewish friends, and Berrala when she wanted something from him. In her fantasies she undoubtedly saw
him sitting in a plush office with ‘Bernard K.Feldman’ gilded on his door. If he did not have a middle name, she’d provide one.

  ‘That’s not all.’ She put a restraining hand on his sleeve as he brushed past impatiently. ‘Ruthie’s in the lounge with that scabby dog of hers, Zutzke.’

  Berka stopped. His gruffness could not hide his concern.

  ‘What now?’ he asked.

  ‘This afternoon,’ Yenta said replacing her bosom on the ledge, assured of his attention, ‘when Gittel went out to feed the chickens, she noticed a piece of roof missing from the chicken run. And the chicken she’d been fattening for Purim had flown.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So poor Gittel chased all over First Avenue looking for the silly chicken. She finally found it on Reb Hershl’s kitchen table, pecking at the farfel which Faigel had put out to dry.’

  ‘So now we’ve completed the saga of the chicken. What about Ruth?’

  ‘Wait. Sheinka at the same time noticed that Ruth and Zutzke were missing. She went to the veld where Ruth had run away last time and saw her, followed by the dog, climbing up the mine dump. She was dragging that piece of corrugated iron behind her, like a sled. When she saw Sheinka, she fled into the plantation as though a horde of Cossacks were after her. Pregnant as she is, Sheinka dragged herself across the wet veld and found Ruth lying under the trees, crying her heart out. She wouldn’t say why. You know a mother’s heart: Sheinka feared she’d been raped by those wild mine kaffirs…’

  ‘Stop talking like a stupid yiddine. So what happened then?’

  ‘So what happened then he asks. Nothing.’ Yenta hated interruptions. She liked to tell a story in her own time, with suitable digressions. But she remembered that Benjamin was in from the Free State and controlled her temper. ‘So what happened? Ruth ranted like a meshugene about pogroms, blood and snow. The piece of iron, she said, was her sled and she was running away from the Cossacks. Then she ran away from Sheinka. She’s been in the lounge for the last hour, waiting for you.’

  Yenta looked grave. Berka hated the gravity, the muted tones in which they spoke about Ruth. As though the child were an idiot, a cripple.

  He walked into the dark airless passage from which all the rooms in the house led off. It had pockets of smells which evoked the week’s meals: pickled brisket, sauerkraut, cauliflower, gefilte fish, not to mention the all-pervading smell of pickling cucumbers and fermenting wine. He screwed up his nose and lit his pipe. In the far corner of the lounge Ruth lay sprawled out in a large armchair, her ginger head against Zutke’s spotted one. They were both asleep.

  Berka sat down on a chair near the door. He really needed a drink but he’d wait for Raizel. When she came home she would pour him a schnapps and amuse him with tales about Nathan’s. A perceptive girl, his Raizel. Perhaps he should have let her become a teacher. In the five years that Dovid had gone to night school he had not learned as much English as in the last year when Raizel had begun to teach him. But Berka had been afraid; so many teachers remain old maids.

  With boys it was different. They needed a trade, a profession. Yenta had wanted their son Joel to be a doctor. When he had apprenticed himself to a pharmacist, Yenta consoled herself: They understand more than doctors, these chemists, she said. When I’ve got a pain, a cold, anything, I go to Brown the chemist, he gives me a mixture and in a few days I’m as strong as a horse again. What’s so marvellous about doctors? In the old country the sick died of their diseases and the doctor died of starvation. Please God when Joel finishes, I’ll give him with what to start his own little chemist shop.

  Towards this end Yenta had been pickling cucumbers and fermenting wine in the cellar for years. Her products were snapped up by the neighbours and by Sharp’s Delicatessen as soon as they matured. How’s Joel’s little chemist shop coming along, Berka would ask with heavy sarcasm. His earnings had kept them in relative comfort during all the years of their married life but he did not have a penny in the bank. Laugh, laugh, Yenta would reply. One day you’ll see.

  Joel’s boss was complimentary about him. So charming with the clients, he told Berka. Clients yet; he, Berka, had customers. And so charming. For that he got an education? He wished Joel would shed a little more charm at home. Since he was asked out to his rich clients’ homes he had grown so high and mighty. Bring your friends here one Friday night, Yenta had offered in her innocence. You must reciprocate. I’ll make noodle soup, tzimmes, a stuffed duck.

  Berka had watched Joel take in her untidy hair, her ill-fitting false teeth which clattered loosely as she spoke, her nails which were blackened from the coal stove and from her wine making. He followed Joel’s eyes down to Berka’s slippers which she always wore. I can’t ma, he told her turning away. We’re not geared for visitors. Bring them, bring them, I can manage. Last Pesach I had twenty people here for the seder. I can… She had broken off abruptly, rubbed her nose vigorously and ended lamely: Oh, I understand. Well, perhaps we do need new curtains. And the sofa is a little worn…

  That was education for you.

  Their house did look shabby. The lace curtains were yellow with dust, the floral linoleum needed a good scrubbing and the heavy rust-coloured settee and armchairs threw up clouds of dust when one sat down. Phthisis one could get. But Yenta would not spring-clean until Passover. This vestigial behaviour stemmed from the old country where the housewives waited for the long cold winter to pass and for the snows to melt before they took down their curtains, polished the windows and scrubbed the floors. The fact that Passover occurred in autumn in South Africa, not in the spring, did not deflect Yenta from her girlhood rituals.

  It was hard to keep the mine dust out of the house. In the dry winter months the wind whipped up the loose sand from the dumps, covering everything and everyone with a fine layer of dust. Yet Sheinka and Gittel, Yenta’s sister, managed to keep their house clean. Like a chemist shop—Yenta herself said. But it was to Yenta’s house that the visitors flocked, not to Gittel’s. They dropped in for a chat, for a game of klabberjas; they sat on the veranda in summer and around the kitchen stove in winter. There was always enough to eat for those who were tardy in leaving at mealtimes. Everyone responded to Yenta’s warmth and kindness, and ignored the smells, the dust and the general untidiness of the house. They visited Gittel and Sheinka only by invitation.

  But she could keep the place cleaner, Berka brooded. The only pretty thing in the lounge was a vase of marigolds which Raizel had put on the little glass table. When he suggested to Yenta that she take in a native servant she said: I don’t want blacks in the house; they stink.

  Her cucumbers and her wine didn’t stink. Berka struck a match. Ruth stirred. She’s emotionally exhausted, Berka thought as she moaned quietly and fell asleep again. Since her tonsilectomy she suffered badly from nightmares. They’re choking me, they’re choking me! she’d cry leaping out of bed. They said they’d take out my tonsils with a teaspoon, she told Berka reproachfully when she came out of hospital. A big light shone on me. They put a black smelly thing over my nose and I couldn’t breathe. Afterwards I knew I wasn’t dead because my throat was so sore. They didn’t take them out with a spoon. And they didn’t give me ice cream and jelly afterwards like mamma said.

  Like an orphan they treated her. To have left a sensitive seven-year-old all alone in the hospital; Berka still couldn’t get over it. Yenta had taken Ruth into hospital by tram and Raizel had brought her home next day in a taxi. Dovid was working, Sheinka was pregnant and Gittel couldn’t speak English.

  Berka’s pipe went out again. He did not risk lighting another match. He put the pipe into the ashtray and looked at the pictures on the wall. Yenta’s sepia-tinted mother and father hung above the settee in matching oval frames. Their features had been blurred by time and enlargement and they could have been anybody’s mother and father. The mother, a dark round-faced woman, wore a wig. The father’s face was covered with a long beard, a thick moustache and a forelock which was combed low over his forehead. Only
his large brown eyes— like Raizel’s—were visible above an aquiline nose. He wore a yarmulka.

  The other walls were covered with haughty uncles and smug aunts under whose noses Berka longed to draw big black moustaches. Yenta was proud of her family. They certainly had had the time and money to make frequent visits to the photographer.

  Berka marvelled at the speed with which his feelings of universal love and tolerance dissipated when he stepped into his house. He smiled, however, when he looked at the picture of Raizel and Joel as children. Even Joel looked lovable.

  There were photographs of picnics in Lithuanian woods, of the village choir, of the river. There was also a street scene in Ragaza, a broad sandy road with little wooden houses under shingled roofs; a horse and cart in the distance and an occasional tree growing in a garden. Berka had often seen Ruth standing in front of this picture, staring at it, almost fearfully.

  On the wall behind him was a wedding photo of Dovid and Sheinka. She looked dark and lovely and he proud and studious. A pair of gold-rimmed glasses rested lightly on his nose. Berka smiled. Dovid’s eyesight was as good as his own. The gold-rimmed glasses and the book under the arm were the emblems of the Lithuanian intellectual. They carried the best literature under their arms.

  There were no pictures of Berka’s family. These had been destroyed together with everything else. To look at the walls one would think he had been born from a stone.

  To his right were his and Yenta’s wedding pictures. They were separate and had not been taken at their wedding but Berka insisted on calling them his wedding pictures. One was a picture of Yenta and her sister Gittel. Gittel’s round pretty face was in the full light. Her hair was draped back into a soft chignon and she smiled with the assurance of a pretty woman. Yenta’s face receded into the dark background. Her beaked nose was skilfully touched up by the photographer and her intelligent scornful smile acknowledged that she was a foil for her older sister’s good looks. Only her large brown eyes— again like Raizel’s—brightened up her long dark face.