15
ROSETREES did not go away at Easter. Harry Rosetree said he could not face it. "But we got the reservations," his wife protested frequently. "We shall lose the deposit, Harry," Mrs Rosetree pointed out. "You know what those Hungarians are." Harry Rosetree said that he was feeling sick. Deposit or no deposit, he just could not go away. But went into the lounge-room, and pulled the blinds down. "You are sick?" Mrs Rosetree cried at last. "You are neurotic! I am the one that will get sick, living with a neurotic man." Soon afterwards, she began to cry. She did not dress for several days, but went around in the azure housecoat she had been wearing the evening of that old Jew's visit. It blazed less, perhaps, on Mrs Rosetree now, and the seams were going at the armpits. Nor did Harry Rosetree dress, but sat in pyjamas, over his underwear, and smoked. Or he would just sit, a hand on either thigh. He was tired, really; that was it. He would have preferred to be a turnip. Mrs Rosetree would come in and sit around. "Neurotic," she repeated rather often, which was the worst she could say of anybody after: "What can you expect of Jews?" Then she would peer out through the slats of the Venetians. From a certain angle, Shirl Rosetree still appeared to wear the varnish, but there was another side, where her husband's sudden denial of life had crushed and matted the perm, giving her the look of a crippled bird, or, for Haïrn ben Ya'akov at least, his wife's grandmother, that black old woman whose innocent and almost only joy had been to welcome in the Bride with cup and candle. So that in the room at Paradise East, which normally was just right-oyster satin, rosewood, and the net _Vorhänge__-Harry Rosetree would be shading his eyes, from some distressing effect of light, or flapping of a great, rusty bird. There were moments when the intensity of his experience was such that his wife, who never stopped moving around, or feeling her side, or suspecting her breath, or rearranging the furniture, or again, crying on account of everything, would sit down, and lay her head, the side of crumpled hair, on a little rosewood table, and watch through the slats of her fingers the husband whom she despised, but needed still. Of course Shulamith could not see by the light of reason and the shadowy room what was devouring Haïm, although the surge of her blood would suddenly almost suggest. But she would not accept. She would jump up, and return to the Venetian blinds. Mrs Rosetree would have liked very much to know whether the house in Persimmon Street conveyed an impression of abnormality from the outside. Needless to say, it did not. Since normality alone was recognized in Paradise East, tragedy, vice, retribution would remain incredible until the Angel of the Lord stepped down and split the homes open with his sword, or the Bomb crumbled their ant-hill texture, violating the period suites. For the present, it seemed, from the outside, reality was as square as it was built. The mornings droned on. There was Stevie Rosetree, kicking his heels amongst the standard roses, picking his nose behind the variegated pit-tosporum, as on any other holiday. There was Rosie Rosetree trotting off to mass, again-was it? — or again? — holding the book from which the markers had a habit of scattering, and paper rose-petals of grace. Rosie Rosetree attended all the masses; it was no trouble at all to one trembling on that delicious verge where the self becomes beatified. Even the return to superfluous questions could not destroy bliss at Easter. "Did Father Pelletier wonder why we was not there?" Mrs Rosetree asked. "He asked whether Mumma was sick." "And what did you say, Rosie?" "I said that Dadda was undergoing a mental crisis," Rosie Rosetree answered. And withdrew into that part of her where, she had recently discovered, her parents were unable to follow. Mrs Rosetree was practical enough to respect a certain coldness in her children, because she had, so to speak, paid for it. But she had to resent something. So now she returned to the usually deserted lounge-room which her husband had hoped might be his refuge. She leaned her forearms on the rosewood table, so that her bottom stuck out behind her. She was both formal and dramatic, in azure satin. She said, with some force, "You gotta tell me, Harry, or I'm gunna go plain loopy. Did something happen to that old Jew?" Harry Rosetree was fanning the smoke away from his eyes, although nobody was smoking. She realized, with some horror, she might always have hated his small, cushiony hand. "Eh?" Mrs Rosetree persisted, and the table on which she was leaning tottered. But her husband said, "You let me alone, Shirl." She was frightened then. All that she had ever experienced in darkness and wailing seemed to surge through her bowels. And she went out, out of the house, and was walking up and down in her housecoat, moaning just enough to be heard-fearfully, deafeningly, it sounded to the children on whom she had conferred immunity-as she trod the unconscious, foreign, Torrens-titled soil, beside the barbecue. That way Rosetrees spent their Easter, while for other, less disordered families, Jesus Christ was taken down, and put away, and resurrected, with customary efficiency and varying taste. Outside the churches everyone was smiling to find they had finished with it; they had done their duty, and might continue on their unimpeded way. While Harry Rosetree sat. On the Wednesday Mrs Rosetree, who had begun once more to dress, came and said, neither too casual nor too loud, "Mr Theobalds is on the phone." Harry had to take the call; there was no way out. His wife was unable to follow, though. The conversation was all on Mr Theobalds's end, and Harry, if he answered, that froggy. Afterwards Harry rang a Mr Schildkraut. There was to be _minyan__ for Mordecai Himmelfarb. And however much she was afraid to be, Shirl Rosetree knew that she was glad. She had survived the dangers of the flesh, but did not think she could have endured an interrogation of the spirit. Sometimes she thought she was happiest with her own furniture. So now she began to run the shammy leather over the rosewood and maple veneer, until wood was exalted to a state of almost pure reflection. She got the hiccups in the end.