Prelude to a Certain Midnight Page 2

  Where, she asks herself, is Toon? Where are they all? And where is she, Catchy, who was so much beloved? A tear rolls down and makes a black star upon the ashy surface of the Kelim rug which Toto gave her, saying that it was a Bridal Rug. She would light the fire, only she has forgotten to get any matches. Tentatively she stirs the debris on her dressing-table. She could have sworn that she had matches. Her hands move jerkily: a couple of books, an ash-tray belonging to the café Royal, a small piece of mildewed cheese, a dirty towel, an empty aspirin bottle and a hair comb fall to the floor with a clatter. Catchy pauses, horrified, slightly unsteady on her feet. She does not want to disturb Mrs Sabbatani. That poor woman Mrs Sabbatani loves her so much, relies upon her so much, and is so sweet, so kind, so delicate, when she touches at the matter of arrears of rent. Thank God, thinks Catchy, thank God she has a little lavatory and hand-basin of her own so that she need not disturb Mrs Sabbatani… After three provocative blows she hits the switch. The wash-basin looks like a dried-up river bed. But she has her own W.C. – spattered, derelict, deplorable. Yet it is her own, and nobody else’s…

  At the back of Catchy’s throat something sounds like that tight corset bursting all its hooks. She begins to cry again.

  “Help me! Help me! Do something – anything!” she cries, turning her bloodshot eyes upwards. The lavatory ceiling, marked with a brown stain that looks like the map of South America, gives no answer.

  ∨ Prelude to a Certain Midnight ∧

  Four

  At last she goes to bed as quietly as she can. But the ruined divan twangs like a zither struck by a bored and vicious child. Downstairs Mrs Sabbatani hears it and sighs. Her sister-in-law, an elderly spinster, nods angrily and says for the thousandth time: “So she’s here again, the drunkard. What for are you keeping her here, what for? Why don’t you throw her out, why don’t you? Drunkards she wants, they should burn the house down yet!”

  The widow Sabbatani, sad, pale, and exhausted, screws up her eyes as if in anticipation of a blow and says: “It’s not so easy to get an old tenant out of an unfurnished room.”

  “If they don’t pay their rent? No?”

  “Enough already, Sarah! What are you breaking your head for? So if Mrs Dory owes a week’s rent, she’ll pay.”

  “Pay! Pay!” says Sarah with bitter mockery. “How will she pay? When will she pay, why should she pay? Pay!”

  “She gets an allowance from her husband,” says Mrs Sabbatani, “she gives me what she can.”

  At the sound of the word ‘husband’ Sarah throws down her needlework, lets out a hollow laugh, and says: “Husband! Allowance! She’s a prostitute. A prostitute to have in the house! I’ve got no patience with you.”

  “She’s here again with her prostitutes,” says Mrs Sabbatani, with some irritation, “you’ve got prostitutes on the brain. She’s a married woman, a separated married woman. She mixes up with educated people.”

  “So how much does she owe rent, with her educated people?” asks Sarah.

  Mrs Sabbatani does not want to admit that Catchy has paid no rent for nearly five months.

  “A few weeks,” she replies.

  “A few weeks? She should live so sure! A few months!” Sarah says.

  Harassed almost to tears, Mrs Sabbatani cries out in Yiddish: “Sarah, what do you want of my life? What do you want of my years, Sarah?”

  “She should be thrown out into the street, into the street,” says Sarah, “my only wish is, Sam should be alive – ”

  “Sam should be alive,” says Mrs Sabbatani, glancing up with wet eyes towards a large framed photograph of a man in a bowler hat, which hangs over the fireplace. At this, her sister-in-law pauses for a few seconds. But then Catchy rolls over in bed and there is the plaintive whine of strained wire.

  Sarah says: “Sam would have thrown her out into the street. Into the street, Sam would have thrown her out.”

  “Sam had nothing against the poor woman,” says Mrs Sabbatani, “and my Sonia thought the world of her.”

  “What was, was. What is, is,” says Sarah.

  “Drop it already!” says Mrs Sabbatani. “I should throw out a poor woman into the streets? Will she make me rich with her few shillings? It’s a mitzvah to let her alone.”

  “Fine friends they make,” says Sarah with a sour smile, “drunkards they want in the house. Prostitutes they want in the house. I’m in her way. Better she should have prostitutes; drunkards better, she should have! She’s so rich, already, she can give the house away to such a class of people.”

  “And supposing?” cries Mrs Sabbatani, with as much asperity as she is capable of – which is not much – “do you keep me? Do I owe you anything?”

  Now Sarah begins to weep, beating herself in the face with an agonized hand and rocking forwards and backwards in her chair: “The bit of bread I eat in the house she throws up in my face! I’m in her way, she wants I should go away to a home! Weh ist mir! Weh ist mirl Sam should be here to see it.”

  Now Mrs Sabbatani soothes her, saying: “Sha, sha! May I never move from this chair, Sam never had anything against Mrs Dory. And she thought the world of my Sonia. Whenever she sees a picture of my Sonia, she cries like her heart would break. I’ll make a nice cup of tea.”

  This had been going on, night after night, since Sam Sabbatani died and Sarah came to live with his widow and cheer her up. Having lost her daughter and her husband in one year, Mrs Sabbatani was so broken by grief that it was thought she might go out of her mind. So Sarah came to comfort her. Now, every night, as the divan springs twang out their weary discords under the weight of Catchy’s body, Sarah raises her voice in protest, and the end is always the same. Mrs Sabbatani is soft, slow, and sweet as honey; and as obstinate to cling. She always has the last word: Sam had nothing against Mrs Dory, and the child Sonia thought the world of her.

  ∨ Prelude to a Certain Midnight ∧

  Five

  More than ten years have passed since the death of Sonia Sabbatani made its little sensation in that part of London. In those days Catchy was still clear-eyed and desirable; she paid her rent regularly and kept her little flat clean. Sabbatani’s shop was prosperous. The paintwork was fresh and glossy; the lettering of the fascia was bold and legible; the window was filled with a tasteful display of gents’ second-hand suits, most of which were practically all that the price tickets proclaimed them to be. There was a ticket which announced that gents’ evening dress and morning dress was available for hire. Sam Sabbatani had a good reputation as an honest and obliging tradesman, and a dexterous man who could alter anything to fit anybody. He had an eye for commodities and for faces, but you could see by the composition of his fat, grave face, that he would never make his fortune – he was like a rich province in a state of civil war. His heart had a fifth column behind the fortified walls of his hard head. He was conscious of this and sometimes tried to silence the sly, insidious voices that, at the crises of certain transactions, whispered:

  “The client needs money. He’s not a business man. There’s no business in him. What difference does a pound make? He asks three-pounds-ten. You could get that suit of clothes for fifty shillings, because he wants the money. But will a pound note break you? Don’t be silly! Look at the boy’s face: would he sell his best suit for three-pounds-ten if he didn’t need three-pounds-ten? Perhaps there’s a wife and child ill in bed. Say, God forbid, it was you with your Gertie or your Sonia. There could be rent to pay, there could be groceries. Give him what he asks. What is a pound note? You’ll get it back. Put an extra ten shillings on the price when you sell the suit: put an extra ten shillings on the blue serge you bought yesterday…”

  Then Sam Sabbatani, with a melancholy look at the garment he was buying, would turn to the customer with his Asiatic-bulldog face, and say: “All right, three-pounds-ten,” and push the money across the counter.

  As often as not, the customer went away thinking that he’d been a fool not to ask for five pounds.

  When, how
ever, someone came to try on the blue serge suit, the price of which Sabbatani had raised ten shillings, there would be another skirmish in the mysterious region between his solar plexus and his cerebellum… “Look, a respectable boy wants to get a job. Have a look at what he’s got on. A dark grey hopsack, made by a city tailor. Cost six pounds new; made to measure, one fitting. Look – a tie for eighteen pence, a shirt for five shillings, shoes for seventeen-and-six, all nice and clean. Times are bad. Look at his face. He’s making a frown, and a mouth. He’s trying to show you he doesn’t care. Poor boy, does he think he’s a business man? By him a pound is already important. Give him the blue serge for a pound less! What’s a pound note? Will a pound break you? A good suit of clothes makes a man feel better. It makes him confident. Better still – let him think he’s got a bargain out of you – much better still – he’ll go away, get his job, get married, make a nice family, be a Somebody. It can make all this difference. All for the sake of a pound note. Give him the suit. Put another thirty shillings on the crocodile-skin dressing-case with crystal fittings. Anybody that’ll pay ten pounds for a dressing-case will pay eleven-pounds-ten.”

  Thus twisting his face into an expression of melancholy anger, Sam Sabbatani would say: “All right, take it.”

  When it came to alterations if the suit did not fit, Reason spoke:

  “Make the alterations free of charge. That way you get yourself a loyal customer.”

  By this time, Reason had been undermined by the fifth column. The heart of Sabbatani chuckled in quiet triumph. His head growled impotently. His face scowled.

  If anybody asked for the crocodile-skin dressing-case with crystal fittings, it invariably happened that he was a struggling actor invited to an important house-party, and Sam Sabbatani, with a face of doom, knocked off thirty shillings.

  He even trusted people. When Catchy’s friend, the one she called Osbert, asked for the loan of a decent suit to wear at lunch with a publisher, Sabbatani, with a glare and a growl, let him have it.

  ∨ Prelude to a Certain Midnight ∧

  Six

  Sabbatani was a burly, stooping man of middle height, who liked to wear his hat indoors, and could not touch a thing without working out an estimate of its market price. While embracing a long-lost brother, he would instinctively have pinched up a handful of the back of his coat and judged the cost per yard of the cloth from which it had been cut. And yet there must have been something all-too-human in the man. When his daughter Sonia died, Sam Sabbatani threw away the will to live; and after his death it was demonstrated that he had more debtors than creditors.

  He owed money to a clothes-manufacturer in East London, who said: “Write it off. Poor Sam!” The amount of the bill was thirty or forty pounds. A dozen men in his own neighbourhood owed him about sixty pounds between them. Five of these men sighed with relief; three laughed out loud; two of them simply paid their debts; one claimed that Sam Sabbatani owed him a suit which had been sent for alteration; and the twelfth called with a bunch of flowers and said: “I believe Sam kept his books in his head, Mrs Sabbatani. I want to tell you how sorry I am. You remember my name, perhaps? Osbert – Tobit Osbert. I owe you fourteen shillings for the hire of a suit. Sam trusted me. You haven’t got the record of what I owe, I dare say. Two days at five shillings a day, and four shillings for repairs. May I pay you now? And I’m sorry these aren’t nicer flowers, Mrs Sabbatani…”

  Sam Sabbatani’s widow wept. “You’re the third what comes to pay a bill like this,” she said, looking at the flowers; “people are good.”

  “You are good to have such faith in people,” said Tobit Osbert, a tall, quiet man with a dreamy face and a gentle voice. “You are good, Mrs Sabbatani.”

  “God is good,” said Mrs Sabbatani. “The kettle’s boiling. A cup of tea?”

  “You’re too kind,” said Tobit Osbert, sighing.

  Then Mrs Sabbatani remembered her husband’s sigh before he went away with the strangers. She had been sitting in the shop-parlour. As the door-bell tinkled, Sam leapt up and went out, leaving a cup of tea which he had not yet touched. After a minute or two, something in the tone of a stranger’s voice made her sit up and listen. Then:

  “I don’t believe it,” said Sam Sabbatani.

  “It may be a mistake, but you must come and identify – ” said a stiff-backed man, in a clipped monotone. “Pull yourself together.”

  Sabbatani said: “Why should anybody? How could anybody? It’s a mistake. No offence – anybody can make a mistake… I don’t believe it.”

  She saw her husband turn towards someone she knew – a flat-footed old police constable who tramped a local beat. The policeman looked wretched, and nodded. Then Sam sighed: he seemed to suck into his lungs all the air in the shop, leaving everyone else gasping for breath. That was a terrible sigh.

  “Sam!” cried Mrs Sabbatani.

  “Wait,” said her husband.

  “Keep calm, ma’am – back in a minute or two,” said the man with the stiff back. His voice was as gentle as he could make it. His hard mouth was chopping off chunks of reluctant sweetness, like a toffee-cutter.

  “Wait, Gertie, for God’s sake,” said Sam.

  Half an hour later they returned in a taxi.

  “Where is she?” asked Mrs Sabbatani.

  Sam Sabbatani caught the point of his right-hand lapel in a clenched fist and tore his coat. Then he burst into tears.

  The man with the stiff back said: “Mr Sabbatani, I sympathize. But you’ve got to pull yourself together. We’ve got to have a talk, now. Now. D’you hear? Now. Hold yourself in, Sabbatani. Sit down. Get some strong sweet tea, George…”

  Later, Mrs Sabbatani asked: “But what for? Why? Why should anybody do it to her? A child! Sonia! Why? What for?”

  Sam Sabbatani looked at his wife, and then at the detective, who said: “Just for nothing, ma’am. For nothing at all, Mrs Sabbatani. A madman. Could happen to you or me.”

  “If I could find who it was!” cried Sam Sabbatani.

  “All right, Mr Sabbatani: that’s what we’re here for…”

  “Sammele, Sammele!” said Mrs Sabbatani, weeping. “Why should it be?”

  Her husband could not speak of the abomination; yet it had to come out. The evening papers were already printing the story.

  Sonia Sabbatani, who would have been eleven years old next birthday, had been gagged and bound, raped and strangled, and thrown into the cellar of an empty house. She had told one of her classmates that a friend of her Daddy was going to meet her and tell her a great secret.

  But she named nobody, and Sabbatani had a thousand friends.

  ∨ Prelude to a Certain Midnight ∧

  Seven

  Six months later Sam Sabbatani went to bed with a stomach ulcer. In normal circumstances he would have laughed it off. After the operation he contracted pneumonia: there is more than one way of dying of a broken heart. A man who really does not want to go on living will find deep water or a gas oven in which to drown or suffocate; inside himself, if need be. “Murderer! Murderer!” cried Sam Sabbatani, in his last delirium. “Where is he, the murderer? Murderer! Murderer! Murderer!…” Then he thought that he was back in Bessarabia in the days of the pogroms. “Hide the children!” he shouted, in a voice that echoed through the long cold corridors of the hospital. “Hide the children! In the cellars! The Cossacks are coming! They cut Reb Shmuel’s heart out – they cut the Rebbitzin’s breasts off – they tore little Esther Krejmer to pieces! Hide the children! Where are the men? Quick! Out! Give me the cutting-shears! Dovidel – take the fur-knife! Mottke, take an iron bar! Hold them back a minute, the murderers, while the women hide the children! Where are the men?… Men!… Men! Women, women! – hide the children! the murderers are coming!…”

  But at last he lay back rattling in his throat under the oxygen apparatus. He was buried in the Jewish Cemetery at North Ham, where the remains of Sonia had been lowered into the ground a few months before. There is a little place reser
ved for Mrs Sabbatani next to Sam’s grave, over which stands a tall, ornate gravestone of pale marble.

  This stone cost more than she could afford: members of her family remonstrated with her. “It’s for all three of us,” said Mrs Sabbatani.

  But her time has not come yet. She must wait and live, and in order to live she must carry on the business. And what is the business worth? There is nothing worth honest buying, and next to nothing fit to sell. Clothes are like blood. Nobody sells them, and you need coupons to buy them. It is necessary to play strange games – leer here, nudge there, fiddle on the Black Market. Sam (she thinks) would have seen them all in hell first.

  Meanwhile, Mrs Amy Dory, whom everyone calls ‘Catchy’, cannot pay her rent. And if Catchy would pay her rent, what good would it do? Ten shillings a week can make no difference now: times have changed: nothing will ever be the same again…