‘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.
7
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 reserved 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… .
So thinks Mrs Sabbatani in her loneliness and her unhappiness. Her heart goes out to Catchy, who also has a sorrow. When Sarah is out of the house, and Catchy is at home, Mrs Sabbatani asks her to come down and have a cup of tea. The cup of tea carries a supplement of fried fish, stuffed fish, or something of the sort; bread-and-butter, cheese-cake, apple strudel — anything there happens to be in the house.
Mrs Sabbatani’s heart goes out to this wretched Catchy, who drinks too much and does not eat enough. It is a bad thing, for a woman to drink. Still, there must be a reason. Catchy has troubles. Therefore it is a mitzvah — a charitable act — to be kind to her. What Catchy’s troubles are is neither here nor there. One fact remains for ever: when Sam died, Catchy wept; and she thought the world of Sonia. When Mrs Sabbatani and her family were sitting on sawn-off chairs in deep Hebrew mourning, Catchy and her friend Osbert came to offer condolences.
Catchy was inconsolable, because other people were wretched. Catchy felt only for others, through others.
Now, therefore, Mrs Sabbatani feeds her secretly, when Sarah is not looking. Your own flesh and blood mourns your bereavement: that is normal. But when strangers weep, it is beautiful. Every tear shed by an outsider is a confirmation of the magnitude of your loss. Whenever Catchy thinks of Sonia and Sam, she cries bitterly.
Yet what is it to Catchy?
8
Mrs Sabbatani knows, or should know, that Catchy is ready to weep at any hour of the day or night on the slightest provocation. How many times has she seen her coming home with her mouth twisted into a quivering oblong; bubbling at the nose and dripping at the eyes, sobbing heart-brokenly because she has seen an organ-grinder with one leg, or a dog with a bandaged paw? Yet this good widow cannot bring herself to believe that Catchy hasn’t a special personal feeling for her and her troubles. In any case, Catchy weeps: that in itself is enough. God knows through what steamy, stinking jungles and scummy backwaters a psychiatrist would have to paddle before he found the source of her tears! Mrs Sabbatani is of the opinion that her unprofitable tenant is a victim of misplaced devotion. She is well aware of the meaning of love, yet she cannot pronounce the word except with a certain ironic emphasis and a half-smile; for in her world no one ever talks of Love. You and your husband get over the nonsense of sighing and pouting and billing and cooing early in your married life, and settle down. Love is more than an ‘affair’: it is the bedrock and the prop of life at home. As such it is taken for granted but never discussed. The word Love pertains to romantic stories, dramas, or picture shows. She has read stories and seen films about great tragic loves, and she thinks that she knows what they mean; although they have little enough to do with her. She agreed with Sam when, after having seen Greta Garbo in Wild Orchids, he grunted: ‘Love! Schmove! They should have a few children to bring up; they should have the cooking to do and a house to keep clean, and look after the shop. Love!’
(Yet Sabbatani died of grief.) Still, Mrs Sabbatani cannot get it out of her head that Catchy is devoured by a romantic yearning for someone — she suspects Osbert. She always liked that kind, quiet, considerate gentleman. But years have passed since she saw him last. He has grown prosperous, and has a wife and a smart flat in Kensington, now. No one sees him any more.
Once in a while she asks Catchy for something on account of arrears of rent. On such occasions — she always waits until Sarah has gone to the pictures — she approaches the subject in a roundabout way: