Gitel was convinced that charm and inner beauty would enable her girls to win the love of the men who would marry them. It was out of the question for her to allow her girls to wear make-up. Only low women, or actresses like the great Helena Modjeska, were allowed to wear cosmetics. But it was still possible to protect one’s face from the redness caused by the wind and frost, and remain respectable at the same time. So Gitel brought out her secret weapon.
Face cream.
Gitel’s was made from plants, spermaceti, lanolin, essence of almond and extracts of Carpathian conifer bark. Every night, especially if it had been a bitingly cold day, her daughters would line up in their nightdresses according to height and impatiently lift their little faces like baby chicks seeking their food.
‘Mama, Mama! On me! And me! No, Pauline, get out of the way, it’s my turn!’
They liked to tell stories at home, and Gitel’s story was that the cream had been made originally for Helena Modjeska by the Lykusky brothers, two Hungarian chemists who were customers of Hertzel’s. Modjeska was the most famous actress in Poland. It was highly doubtful she ever visited the Rubinstein family, despite Helena’s claims to the contrary, but the elder Lykusky brother, Jacob, probably came to dinner quite often. And he brought with him a big jar containing the precious mixture, wrapped in newspaper.
Gitel would transfer it into little ceramic pots that she stored in a cool spot in the pantry with the jars of pickles and onions. Her sense of thrift ensured the cream would last until the next delivery. The handful of beauty principles she passed on to her daughters would change the life of the eldest. Before Helena left for Australia, Gitel gave her twelve little jars, like twelve little talismans, to protect her.
Helena’s position among her siblings shaped her personality significantly. ‘When I was very young I already had to help my mother control the rebellious little troop. When you’re the eldest of eight girls, you get into the habit of running things.’1 She didn’t altogether mind this, given her domineering character. She was both a tomboy and an accomplished young lady. A steamroller full of grace.
Control and charm – you could sum Helena up in those two words. At the age of twelve she was in charge of running the household. She became the ‘department head’, buying the food and linen ‘with a spontaneous taste for what was finest and sturdiest’. In all likelihood these precocious duties shaped her talents as an organiser. ‘I was the one who had to intervene and mediate between my younger sisters and our parents, which is the best training I could have had for managing my future employees.’2 But she also had to carry out the other household tasks that their solitary servant could not handle on her own: making the beds, putting the water on to boil, fetching wood for the stove, helping the little girls to wash, overseeing their homework and separating them when they began to fight.
‘Shh, shh, silence! Papa will punish you. And if he doesn’t, I swear that I will!’
And then there was the table to set and clear, and the dishes to put away, keeping the ones for meat and dairy separate. And there were the preparations for the Sabbath and all the religious festivals – Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Hanukkah, Passover, Sukkot, Purim, Shavuot. She had to get out the tablecloths, iron them, polish the silverware, light the candles, lay out the prayer books, keep an eye on the dinner in the kitchen – the chicken broth where the kneidels or the gefilte fish were cooking – then knead the challah bread with her mother. Gitel’s sole ambition was for her daughters to become good balaboostas, accomplished homemakers. Because it wasn’t enough just to catch a man: you had to know how to keep him.
That was clearly not Helena’s ambition: she hated being stuck at home. From early adolescence she would hurry to join her father in the store to evade the chores her mother sought to burden her with. When she left school, she quickly found her place behind the counter. She would have preferred to continue her studies, but that was not an option.
Besides, she liked going to the store. She managed much better with the customers than her father did, she could count faster than he could, and she knew the inventory, orders and amounts owed or due down to the last zloty. Hertzel was better suited for reading holy texts than for commerce, so he appreciated her energy and skill with the bookkeeping. But he also got annoyed with her natural authoritarianism. They would have to marry her off quickly, but to do that they needed a dowry, and Hertzel never managed to put aside even the tiniest amount – not for Helena or any of the other sisters. The mere thought of it made him sigh. Then he would return his attention to his old books, submitting to the will of the Almighty, who was bound to help him sooner or later.
Helena was frequently irritated by her father’s feebleness. Books, nothing but books … what was the point of all that studying if he couldn’t feed his family? On two occasions she got him out of a tight spot. The first time, she went to bargain over the purchase of 20 litres of kerosene from a supplier who lived in Lemberg, the capital of Galicia. Her father had been stuck in bed with a bad back since the day before, and Gitel had far too much to do at home to go in his place.
Hertzel could not afford to lose the contract. The shipment had been resold at twice the price to a cattle merchant who had already paid a deposit. For once they would be able to finish the month without any debts. All evening long Helena heard her parents quarrelling, her father lamenting, her mother sighing. Always the same reproaches – Gitel bemoaning their poverty, and Hertzel berating her because he was ashamed. The young girl was fed up with their arguing.
As soon as she got up in the morning she announced that she would go to Lemberg on her father’s behalf. He told her she was crazy and that the merchants would laugh in her face. Helena was so adamant that finally, with his wife’s consent, he let her take the train, although he did send the shop boy to escort her. Just before she left for the central station on Lubicz Street, Gitel looked her daughter straight in the eyes.
‘If you really want to be smart, above all you must listen. And don’t say a word more than you have to.’
Helena managed to close the deal as they had hoped, for the price Hertzel had requested. All she’d had to do was stay firm. And no one had made fun of her.
Some time later, Hertzel ordered a huge quantity of eggs from Hungary that would have to be sold off again as quickly as possible. The shipment was running late and was due to arrive at the station in Kraków the day before the feast of the Assumption, which, in devoutly Catholic Poland, meant four days of public holidays with no workers available to unload it.
The city was baking in an August heat wave. No one ventured out into the hot streets until late afternoon. The railway carriages were turning into incubators and several chicks had already hatched. Fearful of his imminent ruin, Hertzel was trying in vain to obtain a special dispensation. Gitel was moaning and wailing. Without consulting her parents, Helena decided to go straight to the stationmaster on her own: she would persuade him to unload the shipment. After half an hour of back and forth discussion, in which he did not have the last word, the stationmaster sent Helena to see the director of the railways, who was shut inside his furnace of an office sweating like a lump of lard.
The moment she came into the room, the director looked this tiny Jewish woman up and down with all the scorn she inspired in him. But Helena was so determined to get her way that she didn’t give a damn what he thought. She sniffed and hiccupped and a stream of words flowed from her lips: eggs, my father, bankrupt. Then she started all over again, until the man became dizzy.
Exhausted, the director gave the order to unload the eggs onto the platform and waved her away. Helena ran all the way across Kraków as if she had a dybbuk on her heels and arrived home dishevelled, breathless, and flushed. Without pausing to catch her breath she gave the good news to her parents, who cursed her audacity but also thanked her for it. Hertzel was saved.
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