[72] Wise and dread spirits

It’s just grandfather and I, with an hour of sunlight left by the time he closes his shop, and I’ve talked him into posing his hand for me while we wait for Emma to return from Charlotte’s inner palace. He’s at his kitchen table, with his right hand holding a cabbage from above, and I’ve brought in his step ladder so that I can look down at it.

‘And this is all you want me to do? You don’t want me to pick it up.’

‘I’d prefer not.’

‘Why, Paul? It’s only a hand. It’s only a cabbage.’

‘Everyone has hands, Mr Aaronson. That’s why.’

‘True enough. So it’s one of those universal experiences, having hands. But holding a cabbage in one of them is not quite so universal.’

‘Something like that.’

‘So that’s how you think.’ And with his left hand, he turns the page of his newspaper. He reads the Yiddish one every day.

‘I don’t understand you, Paul,’ he tells me. ‘But perhaps one day I won’t have to. Do you even care about cabbage?’

‘I care about Emma, who includes her grandfather’s cabbages.’

‘Tell her, show her sometimes, Paul. It’s to easy to forget to do that. Anyway, that’s good.’ He turns another page. ‘Except you haven’t met her parents yet. I’m beginning to hope you never need to. But without them the world wouldn’t be honoured with her. There’s the good with the bad, but you and me, we get the good.’

‘Is there anything in the paper?’

‘It’s an island paper. I like it that nothing happens here really. No, this part of the Isle is mostly just us. Germans – I try not to think about them much. They talk and talk about unity, but they’ll never succeed without a scapegoat, and Jews are the simplest one they’ve got. There’s a journal on the top of the book shelf. Can you reach it for me?’

‘This one?’

‘That’s it, the Russian one. How good is your Russian?’

‘I’m Czech.’

‘So you can parse it if you know the alphabet. What does it say?’ He holds it up to me.

I squint. ‘Record of Moldovan Culture.’

‘Annals, Paul. Annals of Moldovan Society. A Romanian Orthodox journal. Do you know what I truly hope to do? Besides what I already do? I’d like to learn where the blood libel began, then tell everybody. I’ve got fifteen years, I think. Everything has a history, you know. There’s an article in here that troubles me. Not the article so much, but a reference in it to a pamphlet that I’m telling myself I must find.’ His hand tightens on the cabbage. ‘Who wrote this? Another Jew hater, but that’s the Pale for you – full of Jews and people who don’t like them much. Palestine doesn’t seem such a silly idea while you’re trying to scrape a journal like this from your tongue. When did Emma say she was coming home?’

‘I’m sure before dark. Charlotte always lets people go before dark.’

‘Emma can’t bear to be away from you much, can she?’

‘Or you, Mr Aaronson.’

‘But you have plans, don’t you. You’ll take her away in the spring?’

‘Yes. She doesn’t want her parents to find us. Can I hope they won’t try? Emil tells her he won’t tell them, and Emma says I can trust him, but I’m not sure.’

Emma’s convinced herself that mommy and daddy don’t know where we are, because she wants it so much to be true. I think it’s more likely they know and that they’re leaving us be for their own reasons.

‘I’ll do about that what I can do. I only knew her for what, eight months before she met you. I should be jealous, but I’m not. If my finding her led to her finding you, I can hope that’s how it should be. Well, she’ll know she has a home here with me, won’t she?’

‘Of course.’

‘And so do you?’

‘Because so does she,’ I tell him. ‘We never meant to stay here long.’ And I think about the world, and how small the one is that he’s made for himself, and remember that she hasn’t finished becoming, and that neither have I.

That time of night, on this lane, it’s quite enough to hear a fiaker approaching from the corner, but this sounds heavier. A moment later a carriage blocks the street in front of the shop and a footman in livery and pomaded hair steps down from the back to open the door for Emma. Then the driver steps down to unstrap a picnic hamper from the back box, while I watch to see whether sister got Emma drunk. No, she’s cold sober but a little breathless and I can tell her nose is still sparkling. Grandfather lets the driver place the basket on the table in front of us, then the footman follows in with a crate of red and two sabres and two fencing masks on top of it. They click heels and bow to Emma, who’s been waiting for them to hold the door for her like a little princess. Women, they all know what airs are like to put on, okay, whether they use them much or not. They must all practise the princess walk when they’re little and no one’s watching.

‘Hello, grandfather.’ And she starts to laugh.

He’s staring at the sabres with his head cocked.

‘Paul,’ she says. ‘Charlotte says you’d teach me how.’

I unsheath one part way and try the blade with my thumb. ‘They’re for practice, actually.’ I tap my hand with the blade, my fingers don’t fall off.

‘I don’t want them in this house,’ grandfather says, as close to a demand as he ever will get.

‘I’m sorry, grandfather.’ Emma places the sabres outside the back door with the masks hanging from them and comes back to open the hamper. We all smell rich meat, savoury sauces, roasted and stewed potatoes, half a strawberry cake.

‘She says it’s all kosher,’ Emma says.

‘What are we supposed to do with it all? Paul?’

‘Charlotte is too much for most people,’ I tell him. Which Emma thinks is hilarious.