You might cross this road and walk a few steps to the edge of the cliff. Down below is the jagged water. All day it chatters back and forth across the gravel beach, unless the weather’s rough. Farther out it’s mauve like a pair of cold lips; closer in it’s copper-green, gun-grey, seducing seaweed to dance the seven veils despite the chill, chained to their rocks by the hair. And there on the cliff you might sit with your legs dangling even on a flinty winter day, and feel soothed by the salt wind. And if you were like Materia, you might look out, and out, and out, until what there was of sun had subsided. And you would sing. Though you might not sing in Arabic.
In time, Materia wore a path from the two-storey white house, along the creek, across the Shore Road, to the cliff.
They didn’t have much furniture at first. James bought an old upright piano at auction. In these early days Materia would play and they’d sing their way through the latest Let Us Have Music for Piano. Sometimes she’d slide down the bench and insist he play and he would, with gusto, the first few bars of some romantic piece, and then stop short, just as he did when he tuned pianos. Materia would laugh and beg him to play something right through and he would reply, “I’m no musician, dear, I’d rather listen to you.”
He built her a hope chest out of cedar. He waited for her to start sewing and knitting things — his mother had milled her own wool, spun, woven and sewn, a different song for every task, till wee James had come to see the tweeds and tartans as musical notation. But the hope chest remained empty. Rather than make Materia feel badly about it, James put it in the otherwise empty attic.
He wasn’t much of a cook but he could boil porridge and burn meat. She was young, she’d learn in time. On weekends he tuned pianos as far away as Mainadieu. Weekdays he cycled in to Sydney, where he swept floors at the offices of The Sydney Post Newspaper in the morning and worked as a sales clerk at McCurdy’s Department Store in the afternoon. Then he’d buy groceries, cycle home, make supper and tidy the house. Then prepare his collar and cuffs for the following day. Then climb the stairs and fold his dear one in his arms.
One day in spring he asked her, “What do you do all day, my darling?”
“I go for walks.”
“What else?”
“I play the piano.”
“Why don’t you plant a little garden, would you like me to get you some hens?”
“Let’s go to New York.”
“We can’t just yet.”
“Why not?”
“We have a home, I don’t want to just run away.”
“I do.”
He didn’t want to elope for a second time. He wanted to stay put and prove something to his father-in-law. He intended to pay for this house. He started going to school every night by correspondence with Saint Francis Xavier University — liberal arts. He knew that could lead to law and then he could go anywhere. He had his mother’s best-loved books, her Bible and her Shakespeare, Pilgrim’s Progress and Sir Walter Scott, all well worn, but he knew there were gaps to be filled if he was to become a cultivated man. A gentleman. Books were not an expense; they were an investment. He spotted an ad in the Halifax Chronicle and sent to England for a crate of classics.
He worked at the Sydney Post but he read the Halifax Chronicle to get a perspective on the world outside this island — the real world. The hacks at the Post thought he was just a broom boy, and those unctuous philistines at the store thought he was lucky to have a collar-and-tie job what with no family and no one to recommend him. He’d show them too, not that they were worth showing.
One evening that spring, he pried the lid off a packing crate and removed untold treasure: book after beautiful book, Dickens, Plato, The Oxford Book of English Verse — he paused over the latter, weighing it in his hands; just read that cover to cover, thought James, you could go anywhere, converse with the Queen. Treasure Island, The World’s Best Essays, The Origin of Species. He counted them; there were twelve in the crate, that meant he now possessed sixteen books. Just imagine, thought James, all that knowledge, and it’s here in my house on the floor of my front room. He sat cross-legged and surveyed the riches. Which to open first? Their gilded leaves and their crimson covers engraved with gold invited him.
He went and rummaged in the kitchen, returning with a pair of scissors. He selected a volume and lifted its front cover; the spine crackled, sending a shower of red flakes into his lap — no matter, it’s the words inside that count. He took the thin blade of the scissors and carefully cut the first pages. He called to Materia — she was about the house somewhere but he hadn’t seen her for an hour or two. “Materia,” he called out again as he cut the last page. When she appeared he said, “Where’ve you been, my darling?”
“The attic.”
“Oh. What were you doing up there?”
“Nothing.”
He didn’t pursue it, maybe she was up there secretly sewing something for the hope chest, planning to surprise him. He smiled fondly at the thought and said, “You look right pretty.”
“Thank you, James.”
Her hair was freshly braided and wound about her head, and she wore a rosebud print with puffed sleeves, matching ribbons and a hooped skirt.
“Look, my dear,” he said, “here’s a book you might enjoy.”
“Let’s go out.”
“Out where?”
“To town. To a dance.”
“But sweetheart, we can entertain ourselves for free right here, and you’ll see, it’ll be more fun.”
He gave her a warm smile and drew her down next to him on the horsehair sofa. He put an arm around her and turned to page one of the beautiful volume. He read aloud, “‘Book One. Of shapes transformed to bodies strange, I purpose for to treat …,”’ savouring the words and the warm weight of his wife cuddled close, “‘Then sprang up first the Golden Age…. ’”
He read and evening closed in. “‘Men knew no other countries yet than where themselves did keep. There was no town enclosed yet with walls and ditches deep…. ’” He read and the coals cooled to grey in the hearth. Reaching over to the lamp and raising the wick, he remarked to his wife, “Now isn’t this better than going out among strangers?” And turning to her for confirmation, he saw she was fast asleep. He kissed her head and returned to the book, “‘Of Iron is the last, in no part good or tractable…. ’”
He continued aloud because that was how he and his mother had read together and the thought made James’s happiness complete far into the night, “‘ … Not only corn and other fruits, for sustenance and for store, were now exacted of the earth, but eft they ’gan to dig. And in the bowels of the earth insatiably to rig for riches couched and hidden deep in places near to hell
By midsummer she was three months pregnant and crying all the time. James couldn’t figure it out — weren’t women supposed to be happy about something like that? He tried to be extra nice. He brought her sweets from town. He tried to get her to read so they’d have something to talk about.
He was at first amazed and then dismayed by her indifference to books. He assigned her a chapter a day of Great Expectations in order to cultivate a love of reading and at supper-time he quizzed her, but she was a sorry student and he abandoned the effort. He racked his brains to devise some sort of seemly diversion for her, having given up hope that she’d take to housewifery. But it was no use, and he tried not to judge her too harshly; she was young, that was all.
And yet it tried his patience.
“Materia, you can’t spend all your time wandering the shore and fooling around on the piano,” for lately she’d begun playing whatever came into her head whether it made sense or not — mixing up fragments of different pieces in bizarre ways, playing a hymn at top speed, making a B-minor dirge out of “Pop Goes the Weasel,” and all with the heavy hand of a barrelhouse hack. James found it disturbing, unhealthy even. Besides, he couldn’t study with that racket.
“I’m sorry, James.”
“Why don’t you play something ni
ce?”
At which she struck up “The Maple Leaf Rag” and he yelled at her for the first time. She laughed, pleased to have gotten a rise. He decided to ignore her after that. Which made her cry — again — but, frankly, he’d figured out her tricks by now, she was just looking for attention.
On Labour Day he turned down an invitation to bring the wife and come to a McCurdy employee boat ride and picnic. He told himself he had no desire to socialize with ready-made gentlemen, it was enough that he worked beside them; if he once gave himself the spurious comfort of a social life he might get sidetracked. But deep down he winced at the thought of showing Materia to anyone. He was grateful they lived in the middle of nowhere. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her any more, he did. It was just that, recently, it had struck him that other people might think there was something strange. They might think he’d married a child.
By September she had puffed up and turned sallow. He began sleeping on a cot by the kitchen stove. “It’s for your own good, my dear, I don’t want to roll over and gouge the baby with an elbow.”
Pound, pound, pound on the piano keys in the middle of the night. No wit any more, however juvenile, no naughty ditties, just discords. Tantrums. Fine, let her exhaust herself. Plank, splank, splunk into the wee hours. In the mornings he would rise from his kitchen cot as though he’d slept perfectly well, pack his own lunch, pat her on the head and cycle off to work on iron tires.
By Hallowe’en she was big as a house. One evening he came home to find her sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of molasses-cookie dough, for that was what the ingredients lined up on the table indicated. He was delighted. Her first attempt at cooking. He even gave her a kiss to show just how pleased he was, but when he went to dip a finger in the dough the bowl had been licked clean.
“What in God’s name are you doing?”
She just looked queasily straight ahead.
“Answer me.”
She just sat there, bloated.
“What’s wrong with you? Don’t you think? Haven’t you got anything to say for yourself?”
The blank stare, the flaccid face. He grabbed the bowl.
“Or are you just a lump of dough?”
No answer.
“Answer me!”
He hurled the bowl at her feet and it broke. She ran outside and threw up. He watched her hunched and huge over the back steps. You’d think by now she’d know enough not to bring it on, a dumb animal knows not to make itself upthrow. Well she can stay out there till I’ve cleaned up this mess.
He swept the floor and scrubbed it too. He got a lot of work done that evening, not to mention some clear thinking. He locked the piano and pocketed the key. Then he said, “I’m not cooking any more and I’m not cleaning. You do your job, missus, ’cause Lord knows I’m doing mine.”
She looked so sad and dumpy. He had a pang of pity. Did all women get this ugly?
“I’m sorry, James,” she said and started crying. At least it was better than that weird staring she’d been at lately. He let her hug him, knowing it would calm her. He didn’t want to be cruel. He hoped the child would be fair.
Materia went upstairs to the attic. She knelt down, opened the hope chest and inhaled deeply. James thought Materia hadn’t filled the hope chest because she had nothing to put in it. But she kept it empty on purpose, so that nothing could come between her and the magical smell that beckoned her into memory. Cedar. She hung her head into the empty chest and allowed its gentle breath to lift and bear her away … baked earth and irrigated olive groves; the rippling veil of the Mediterranean, her grandfather’s silk farm; the dark elixir of her language, her mother’s hands stuck with parsley and cinnamon, her mother’s hands stroking her forehead, braiding her hair … her mother’s hands. The smell of the hope chest. The Cedars of Lebanon. She stopped crying, and fell asleep.
The Jewish Lady
Mrs Luvovitz had seen the pregnant woman sitting on the cliff’s edge. Like a fixture warning ships, or luring them. People around here believed in kelpies. Mrs Luvovitz’s imagination had been infected. What could you expect with so many Catholics? They saw omens in everything. Where Mrs Luvovitz came from they called them golems.
Maybe there’s something wrong with the woman, thought Mrs Luvovitz, maybe she’s simple. Because when Mrs Luvovitz had passed by on the Shore Road to Sydney with her cartload of eggs the other day, she had heard the woman singing what sounded like nonsense words. A poor simple-minded woman from down north in the hills perhaps. They marry their cousins once too often. But as yet Mrs Luvovitz had never seen the woman’s face, for she always wore a plaid kerchief that had the effect of blinkers.
Mrs Luvovitz had asked her husband, Benny, if he’d seen the pregnant woman, but he never had.
“Mr Luvovitz, you must have.”
“I haven’t, Mrs Luvovitz.”
“She’s there every day.”
“Maybe she’s a ghost.”
“Get out, Ben.”
Benny laughed. He knew her weakness.
Mrs Luvovitz had resolved to speak to the woman next time, because by now she was beginning to suspect she’d been all too Celtified. She needed to satisfy herself that the woman was human and not an omen. If an omen, it was important to determine certain things: “When do I usually see her? In the morning? Or evening?” A forerunner seen in the morning meant death was still a ways off. Seen in the evening, it meant get ready. A child meant the death of an innocent.
On this day, Mrs Luvovitz was driving the Shore Road from Sydney as usual, having sold all her eggs. — “A dozen Jewish eggs, please.” — She could hardly keep up. Likewise Benny, who delivered meat in his ice-box wagon.
“Hello,” said Mrs Luvovitz, pulling up her horse.
The bright kerchief fluttered in the sea breeze; it was a nice day but that could mean anything.
“Hello there,” Mrs Luvovitz repeated.
“Hello, hello!” cried little Abe beside her.
The plaid kerchief turned and Mrs Luvovitz said to herself, “Gott in Himmel!” A pregnant child. A dark little thing, too, she must be from away. Or from Indian Brook maybe. Mrs Luvovitz forgot all about ghosts and golems. “Where are you from, dear, who’s your mother?” — falling into the local formula.
“I haven’t got a mother.”
“Get in the cart, girl.”
It was surprising to find out that the child belonged to that big new white house across the way. Mrs Luvovitz had never seen her come or go, just appear, as it were, on the cliff.
“How old are you?”
“Thirteen and three-quarters.”
Ay-yay-yay, and married to that young fella. It was illegal, of course. Where did he get her? — a child bride. From overseas somewhere, was she Eyetalian? A Gypsy? What was the accent? Mrs Luvovitz made tea and entertained these and other questions. All would be revealed, she’d see to that, but first, tea. Where she came from and where she lived now, tea meant a spread. She placed a plate of cookies before Materia, who said, “What’s that?”
“What do you mean, ‘what’s that’, that’s ruggalech.”
Materia took a bite of the folded-over cookie. It tasted strange and familiar all at once, cinnamon and raisins.
“It’s good,” said Materia.
“Of course it’s good.”
Materia turned her attention to little Abe, playing peekaboo.
“Where’s your family, Mrs Piper?”
“I haven’t got one — you can call me Materia.”
“What’s your maiden name?”
“Mahmoud.”
For God’s sake, everyone knows the Mahmouds.
“Ibrahim?”
“That was my father.”
“And Giselle.”
Materia nodded.
Mrs Luvovitz remembered when the Mahmouds used to sell from a donkey, hampers swaying on each side. Hard-working people, they did what we all hope to do. Now there’s the big dry-goods store in Sydney.
“So wha
t are you saying, ‘You haven’t got a family’? You’ve got a family, they’re your family.”
Materia shook her head. “I don’t belong to them any more.”
“Why not?”
“I’m dead.”
“You’re dead? You’re not dead, what kind of crazy nonsense is that, ‘I’m dead’?”
“It’s a custom —”
“I know from the custom.”
Sitting shiva for your own flesh and blood while they’re alive and well, such a custom is better left in the Old Country. “Drink your tea, Mrs Piper.”
“You can call me —”
“And eat. You’re eating for two, eat.”
Mrs Luvovitz taught Mrs Piper to cook.
“What’s this?” asked James.
“Chicken soup with matzo balls.”
He looked at the bland sponge floating in broth. Broke off a fragment with his spoon, ate it. After all, not so different from a tea bisquit dunked in soup. “This some kind of Ayrab delicacy?”
“Jewish.”
They weren’t the first people he would have picked as friends for his wife but, after all, it wasn’t as though they were sacrificing babies over there. And she had finally started acting like a wife, even if the results were on the heathen side. James figured it was just as well the neighbours were foreign; it wouldn’t occur to them that there was anything strange about his being married to such a young girl. And what did he care what a Hebrew farmer thought of him? — although Mr Luvovitz seemed like an all-right type. James had gone over there to make sure.
“Call me Benny.”
“Benny.”
“Taste this.”
“What is it?” Looked like a plug of MacDonald’s Twist.
“Taste it.”
“… hm.”
“You like that?”
“Not bad. It’s good.”
“I smoked that myself — you want, I’ll sell you a whole cow for the winter, fresh off the hoof, pick one, they’re all good.”
Nothing really strange about the Jew except the accent, his black beard and curly sideburns and his little cap. James bought half a cow.
“I don’t want it kosher,” said James.