There are two spacious lounges in my grandfather’s house. On a walnut table in one of them rest leather-bound collections of a newspaper that was printed in biblical times, namely The Judean Chronicle. The volumes are half an inch thick, and they’re tall and wide as the Eastern Province Herald. They are filled with newspaper stories about people like Adam and Eve, Noah, Elijah, Moses, and the glorious Maccabees. There are photographs too, as in any other newspaper. They are all black and white, so Joseph wears a coat of many shades of grey. Elijah is my favourite prophet. He has a wide, round forehead, generous as a boulder, and wild frightened eyes. We leave a glass of wine for him at the door during the two Pesach meals every year, but he never comes to drink it. There are pictures of the pyramids and the People of Israel building them, slaves under the whip. There is a photo of the Tower of Babel, raised in the city of Babylon. Babel and Babylon fit together, though I don’t know exactly how.
The Tower of Babel is an unfinished building in the shape of a bucket turned upside down, with a spiral ramp going around it so that the builders could drag burnt bricks up to the top, and the slime they had as mortar, to raise it even higher. I read the words under the picture carefully: “And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” I am haunted by the picture and the tower, and its unhappy ending. I do not understand God’s reasons for knocking it down and confusing everyone. Things would be so much easier if the whole world still spoke English.
I study the photograph carefully, trying to find a door or window, to work out if the tower had an inside, or if it was solid. It would be much stronger if it were solid, but you couldn’t do much with it then, other than climb the outside. But perhaps that was the only point of the whole building, to reach up to heaven itself. In that case, they wouldn’t need an inside.
The boundary wall of my grandfather’s house is lined with kaffir plums. We climb the easy branches, my cousins and I, and pick the oval fruit. We peel off the skin with our teeth – it is a tight skin, difficult to remove. Then we suck at yellow sour meat. Only a thin layer surrounds the pip, so it is not rewarding to eat. But we do it because we do it. Climbing the trees is more rewarding, and looking down on Brighton Drive, and joking with each other, or throwing kaffir plums at passing dogs. We know that “kaffir” is a cruel word, but not “kaffir plum”. There are also kaffir trees along the street, but not in the garden. They have flaming red flowers in summer. In the garden are Australian cherry bushes, with pink and pulpy berries that are even more sour. Aunt Hannah says we should eat them because they are full of vitamin C. We like to eat such great sourness, and spit out the pulp and the soft seeds, and exclaim how terrible it is. The only sweet thing in the garden is the honeysuckle creeper. We know how to pluck the flowers, bite off the green blob at the bottom and suck out the nectar. That is why they are called honeysuckles.
In front of the house are two gigantic palm trees. They tower above the roof. In summer they grow clusters of inedible orange dates. The palm trees are tall and strong and make me proud to belong in my grandfather’s house. We are safe here in Summerstrand, or almost safe, as safe as we can be for now.
Simon
Simon walks to shul through the evening light. By now it has softened, and the air is kind. He walks lazily because the synagogue is near and because he anticipates an hour of boredom, of droning voices, in other words, a time devoid of meaning. He knows only one thing will punctuate his boredom: his hatred of Rabbi Greenblatt. The rabbi is a small red-headed man with an irritating goatee. He was Simon’s Bar Mitzvah mentor last year and proved to be a foul-tempered tyrant.
Simon struggled to learn his portion of the Torah. He hardly understood a word of Hebrew, like many of the Jewish boys of Summerstrand. There is a system of punctuation to dictate the melody, a simple musical system that he didn’t understand either. He suffered under the rabbi’s harsh regime, struggling not only to learn a tract of scripture in a foreign language, but to chant it correctly as well. The rabbi suffered too, not gladly, the young fools he was obliged to teach.
Now Simon sits in the back row of the synagogue next to his friend David Goldberg, chatting quietly through the service. Rabbi Greenblatt stops his incantation abruptly, and fiercely looks about. His face is milky and dissatisfied. Even at this distance, Simon can see that caustic face. It helps him hate the rabbi more. The mutter of conversation dies away, and the rabbi continues. He is obliged to halt several times. There is always a constant murmur of voices throughout the service, adults and children alike.
The boy stands up and sits down, automatically, as the congregation rises and falls to the tide of the ritual. He dreams his way through the loosely harmonised murmuring, everyone reading or chanting off by heart, but never at quite the same tempo. His heart lifts when the congregation finally launches into the stirring call-and-response melody that closes the service, and for the first time this evening he sings with real pleasure.
Outside he falls in with his elder brother Jude and walks home with him.
“What did you do with those oysters?” asks Jude, who likes to interrogate Simon about his own business.
“Sold them to Bernard Kessel.”
“What do you charge these days?”
“Sixty-five cents a dozen, ten cents more if we open them.”
“Not bad. I think you and David should charge more, though.”
“Maybe.”
“I reckon you could double that and get away with it.”
“You reckon?”
“Yes, I reckon.”
Simon prefers not to argue with Jude. His brother doesn’t know how to stop arguing.
“You should take up scuba diving,” says Jude. “Now that would be an achievement. Peter Berman goes scuba diving. He says it’s incredible. They go down to Thunderbolt Reef. He says he’s seen a manta ray out there, a huge bloody thing.”
Simon sees himself floating in twenty-five metres of water at Thunderbolt Reef, far out in Algoa Bay. A giant manta ray surges up from below, sending him spinning, making his stomach lurch. He buries the image, and buries the idea that follows even more quickly, that he is a coward. He blushes with shame, grateful it is too dark for Jude to see. His brother is inclined to seize on weakness where he can, and grind on it.
“It was about the size of a car, Peter said. Huge bloody thing.”
“What kind of car?” asks Simon. “A Ford Anglia?”
Jude glances quickly at him in the near dark. Simon turns too, sees a half-smile form on his brother’s face and freeze there in suspicion. Perhaps he fears sarcasm. They walk on.
Eli
I am in my mother’s lap. We all call her Ma, or Mom. I have other names for her, Mi, Meh, Mo, Moom, softer names that are my own to use. I remember this, it speaks to me: resting with my head on her breast, my knees folded just below her armpits. She smells of roses and cigarettes. Her name is Rose too. I feel her soft breast under my cheek, under the pucker of her bra. She sings to me:
Que sera, sera
Whatever will be, will be
The future’s not ours to see
Que sera, sera
What will be, will be.
The future is a dim place, it is badly lit. One day I will wear spectacles and be treated for a lazy eye which will never grow diligent. But now I sit in her lap and cling to her breast, and feel wonderful.
Long before the future, on sunny mornings we go to the beach, to Bird Rock. We go to the Secret Pool, where all mothers and children go. We call it the Cigarette Pool. It is protected from the sea by a reef, and its ribbed sand lies under only two feet of water. It is much warmer than the proper sea.