Riders in the Chariot (34 page)

"Not even a geranium," said Mrs Flack, with bitter satisfaction.

Then, if you please, the door opened, and out came, not the Jew, that would have been electric enough, but a woman, a woman. It was a thickish, middle-aged woman, in shapeless sort of faded dress. Some no-account woman.

It was Mrs Jolley who realized first. She was often quite quick, although it was Mrs Flack who excelled in psychic powers.

"Why," Mrs Jolley said now, "what do you know! It is that Mrs Godbold!"

Mrs Flack was stunned, but managed, "I always thought how Mrs Godbold was deep, but how deep, I did not calculate."

"It is wonderful," said Mrs Jolley, "to what lengths a woman will go."

For the owner himself had just emerged. The Jew. The two ladies clutched each other by the gloves. They had never seen anything so yellow or so strange. Strange? Why, dreadful, dreadful! Now the whirlwinds were rising in honest breasts, that honest corsets were striving to contain. The phlegm had come in Mrs Flack's mouth, causing her to swallow quickly down.

Mrs Jolley, as she had already confessed, had noticed the man on one or two previous occasions as she came and went between Xanadu and Sarsaparilla, but had failed to observe such disgraceful dilapidation of appearance, such irregularities of stubble, such a top-heavy, bulbous head, such a truly fearful nose. In the circumstances, she felt she should apologize to her somewhat delicate companion.

But the latter was craning now.

"He is big," she remarked, between her moist teeth.

"He is not small," Mrs Jolley agreed, as they stood supporting each other on wishbone legs.

"Who would ever of thought," Mrs Flack just articulated, "that Mrs Godbold."

Mrs Godbold and the man were standing together on the steps of the veranda, she on the lower, he above, so that she was forced to look up, exposing her face to his and to the evening light.

It was obvious that the woman's flat, and ordinarily uncommunicative face had been opened by some experience of a private nature, or perhaps it was just the light, gilding surfaces, dissolving the film of discouragement and doubt which life leaves behind, loosening the formal braids of hair, furnishing an aureole, which, if not supernatural--reason would not submit to that--provided an agreeable background to motes and gnats. Indeed, the Jew himself began to acquire a certain mineral splendour as he stood talking, even laughing with his friend, in that envelope or womb of light. Whether the two had been strengthened by some event of importance, or were weakened by their present total disregard for defences, their audience was mad to know, but could not, could not tell. Mrs Jolley and Mrs Flack could only crane and swallow, beside the blackberry bush, beneath their hats, and hope that something disgraceful might occur.

"What is that, Mrs Jolley?" Mrs Flack asked at last.

But Mrs Jolley did not hear. Her breath was roaring through her mouth.

For the Jew had begun to show Mrs Godbold something. Whatever it was--it could have been a parcel, or a bird, only that was improbable, a white bird--their attention was all upon it.

"I believe he has cut his hand," Mrs Jolley decided. "She has bandaged up his hand. Well, that is one way!"

Mrs Flack sucked incredulous teeth. She was quite exhausted by now.

Then, as people will toss up the ball of friendship, into the last light, at the moment of departure, and it will hang there briefly, lovely and luminous to see, so did the Jew and Mrs Godbold. There hung the golden sphere. The laughter climbed up quickly, out of their exposed throats, and clashed together by consent; the light splintered against their teeth. How private, and mysterious, and beautiful it was, even the intruders suspected, and were deterred momentarily from hating.

When they were again fully clothed in their right minds, Mrs Jolley said to her companion, "Do you suppose she comes to him often?"

"I would not know," replied Mrs Flack, though it was obvious she did.

"Tsst!" she added, quick as snakes.

Mrs Godbold had begun to turn.

"See you at church!" hissed Mrs Jolley.

"See you at church!" repeated Mrs Flack.

Their eyes flickered for a moment over the Christ who would rise to the surface of Sunday morning.

Then they drew apart.

Mrs Jolley walked on her way, briskly but discreetly, down the hill, towards Xanadu. She would have liked to kill some animal, fierce enough to fan her pride, weak enough to make it possible, but as it was doubtful any such beast would offer itself, scrubby though the neighbourhood was, she drifted dreamily through the series of possible ways in which she might continue to harry the human soul.

The morning Himmelfarb's hand was gashed by the drill which bored those endless holes in the endless succession of metal plates, was itself an endless plain, of dirty yellow, metallic wherever sweating fanlight or louvre allowed the sword to strike. The light struck, and was fairly parried by defensive daggers, of steel, as well as indifference. Equally, wounds were received. Their past lives rose up in a rush in the throats of many of the singleted men, and gushed out in tongues of sour air, while a few went so far as to fart their resentment, not altogether in undertone. Some of the ladies, who had bared themselves as much as was decent, and who were in consequence looking terribly white, swore they must win the lottery, or leave their husbands. Over every surface, whether skin or metal, humidity had laid its film. Flesh united to mingle with it. Only metal appeared to have entered into an alliance with irony, as the machinery continued to belt, to stamp, and to stammer with an even more hilarious blatancy, to hiss and piss with an increased virulence.

Just after smoke-o, Himmelfarb's hand came in contact with the head of the little drill. Very briefly and casually. The whole incident was so unemotional, probably nobody noticed it. At the time, it caused Himmelfarb very little pain. As he had succeeded by now in withdrawing completely from his factory surroundings, he was usually unperturbed by such wounds as they might deal, even the mental ones. But here was his hand, running blood. There was a fairly deep gash along the side of the left palm.

After a little, he went quietly to the washroom to clean the wound. There was nobody there--except, he then realized, the blackfellow, who could have been staring at himself in the glass, or else using the mirror as an opening through which to escape.

Himmelfarb rinsed his hand beneath the tap. The blood ran out of the wound in long, vanishing veils. At moments the effect was strangely, fascinatingly beautiful.

So it seemed to appear also to the blackfellow, who was now staring at the bleeding wound, whether in curiosity, recollection, sympathy, what, it was impossible to tell. Only that his active self seemed to have become completely submerged in what he was witnessing.

Then the pain began to course through Himmelfarb. For a moment he feared his workmate might address him for the first time, and that he would not be able to answer, except in the words of common exchange.

But was saved. Or cheated.

For the black was going, discarding some vision still only half crystallized, retreating from a step he did not know how to, or would not yet allow himself to take.

The blackfellow had, in fact, gone, and Himmelfarb, after wrapping an almost clean handkerchief round his left hand, returned to his drill for what remained of the working day.

That night his dreams were by turns bland and fiery. His wife Reha was offering, first the dish of most delicious cinnamon apple, then the dish of bitter herbs. Neither of which he could quite reach. Nor was her smile intended for him, in that state of veiled bliss which he remembered. Finally she turned and gave the apple to a third person, who, it was her apparent intention, should hand the dish.

But he awoke in a sweat of morning, less comforted by his dead wife's presence, than frustrated by his failure to receive the dish.

He rose groggily, but prepared as usual to say his prayers, arranging the shawl, not the blue-striped
bar mitzvah tallith
_--that had been destroyed at Friedensdorf--but the one he had received with fervour in Jerusalem, and worn henceforth, touching its black veins in remembrance of things experienced. But when it came to the laying on of the phylacteries, that which should have wound down along his left arm caused him such pain, he could hardly bear it. But did. He said the prayers, he said the Eighteen Benedictions, because how else would it have been possible to face the day? Then, after packing the
tallith
_ and
tephillin
_--they were those few possessions he could not entrust to empty houses--into the fibre case, together with a crust of bread and slice of cheese, he caught the bus for Barranugli, and was soon rocked upon his way, amongst the
goyim
_, on a sea of conversation dealing exclusively with the weather.

That morning the shed almost burst open, with sound, and heat, and activity.

Until Ernie Theobalds approached.

"What's up, Mick?" asked the foreman.

"Nothing," the Jew replied.

Then he raised his hand.

"See," he said. "It is only this. But will pass."

When Mr Theobalds had examined the wound--he was a decent bloke, as well as practical--he became rather thoughtful.

"You go home, Mick," he advised at last. "You got a bad hand. You see the doc up at Sarsaparilla. See what he says. You'll get compo, of course."

"You never know," said Ernie Theobalds afterwards to the boss, "when one of these buggers will turn around and sue you."

Himmelfarb took his fibre case, and went, as he had been told. He saw Dr Herborn, who treated him according to the book, and told him to lay off.

Every day he went to the surgery for his needle. For the rest, he sat surrounded by the green peace of willows, and that alone was exquisitely kind.

Gruelled by his throbbing hand, exalted by the waves of fever, he began again to doubt whether he was worthy of those favours of which he was the object, and in his uncertainty imposed upon himself greater tests of humility, in themselves negligible, even ludicrous, but it became most necessary that his mind should not accept as unconditional that which his weaker body urged him to. For instance, he set himself to scrub out his almost empty house, which he did accomplish, if awkwardly. With less success, he made himself wash dirty linen rather than allow it to accumulate. As he paddled the clothes with one hand and the tips of his excruciating fingers, he was almost overcome by his limitations, but somehow got his washing pegged out on the line.

There he was one day. The sky had been widened by afternoon. A cold wind from out of the south slapped his face with wet shirt; inseparable, cold folds of cotton clung to his shoulder.

When a person came through the grass, and stood behind him.

He looked round, and saw it was a woman.

Respect for his dignity seemed to prevent her breaking the silence immediately.

"I could have done that," she said at last, after she had stretched the possibilities of discretion to their utmost. "Any little bits that you have. If you would give them."

She blushed red, all over her thick, creamy skin. It could have been blotting paper.

"Oh, no," he replied. "It is done." And laughed, idiotically. "It is nothing. Always I do a little. As it comes."

He had grown quite frail on the windy hillside, like some miserable, scrubby tree unable to control its branches. He was clattering. Whereas the thick woman, with all her shortcomings of speech and behaviour, was a rock immovable in the grass. As they stood for that moment, the wind seemed to cut through the man, but was split open on the woman's form.

Then Himmelfarb was truly humbled. He began to walk towards the house. He was rather shambly. His head was bumpy on his shoulders.

"Why should you offer, I wonder, to me?"

Was this, perhaps, a luxury he was begging to enjoy? But he had to.

"It is only natural," she said, following. "I would offer to do it for anyone."

"But I am different. I am a few," he replied, from behind his back.

"So they say," she said.

In the silence, as they walked, one behind the other, he could hear her breathing. He could hear the motion of the grass.

When she said, "I do not know Jews, except what we are told, and of course the Bible; there is that." She paused because it was difficult for her. "But I know people," she said, "and there is no difference between them, excepting there is good and bad."

"Then you, too, have faith."

"Eh?"

Almost at once she corrected herself, and continued very quickly.

"Oh, yes, I believe. I believe in Jesus. I was brought up chapel, like. At Home. We all believe." But added: "That is, the children do."

It was very awkward at times for the two people, who were by now standing in the bare house.

"So this is the Jew's house," she could not help remarking.

Her eyes shone, as if with the emotions occasioned by a great adventure. She had to look about, at the few pieces of furniture, and through a doorway, at the small fibre suitcase under a bed.

"Sir," she apologized at last, "I am sticking my nose into your business. Excuse me," she said. "I will come again, just passing, and take any things you may have for the wash."

Then she went, quickly and quietly, lowering her head, as if that might have been necessary to pass through the doorway.

"Oh," she remembered, when she had already reached the step, "I forgot to say. My name is Mrs Godbold, and I live with my husband and family in that shed."

She pointed.

"And I am Himmelfarb," replied the Jew, with dignity equal to the occasion.

"Yes," she answered, softly.

She would not allow herself to appear frightened of a name, but smiled, and went away.

Two days later she returned, very early, when, through the window, the Jew was at his prayers. She saw with amazement the striped shawl, the phylactery on his forehead, and that which wound down along his arm as far as his bandaged hand. She was too stunned at first to move, but watched the prayers as they came out from between the Jew's lips. Through the window, and at that distance, the words appeared solid. When the intruder forced herself to leave, it did not occur to her to walk in any other way than with her head inclined, out of the presence of the worshipper.