Page 26 of The Girl with a Secret
“But who is yourShabbat goy?” Zlata had asked in bewilderment, when, on the first Sabbath, the Herzelfelds had been insultingly unbothered by the predicament of who would do such things as turn the lights on or off, an act forbidden to Orthodox Jews, and thus needing a gentile to perform them.
“We don’t have one,” Rosa’s mother had replied stiffly.
A heavy and rather ominous silence had followed this pronouncement. Zlata and Moritz had looked at each other in confused alarm, before Rosa had intervened.
“We can act as yourShabbat goy, if you like. We’d be happy to.”
Zlata had looked rather horrified by the idea that fellow Jews would take on the activities proscribed them. She’d shaken her head, disbelieving, and muttered, “Jews… acting asgoys… I don’t understand it.”
With some difficulty, thanks to the Rosenbaums’ reticence and her parents’ standoffishness, Rosa had learned that the couple was from Breslau, a city in Silesia with a large Jewish, Polish-speaking population. The Rosenbaums spoke Yiddish first, Polish second, and German third. It was, Rosa had known, entirely the wrong order for her parents.
Moritz was a repairer of violins, and Zlata kept their home; although they were both in their thirties, they hadn’t had any children and Rosa could tell it was a source of pain, and even shame, for Zlata in particular. She’d felt for them, trying to adapt to this new world, one that was surely even stranger than it was for Rosa and her parents.
Over the course of the next few weeks, they’d learned a way of living together that was both awkward and understanding in turns. Rosa, who did the family cooking, agreed to keep a Kosher kitchen, for she could see that anything else would be disastrousfor Zlata. It meant two sets of dishes, cooking pots, and utensils, and never cooking dairy and meat together, which, with her limited repertoire and cooking skills, Rosa struggled to keep to.
They took turns using the tap and cooker on the landing, and Zlata was scrupulously neat with all her washing and tidying—far more than Rosa was, to her own embarrassment. When they weren’t eating at the table, Moritz and Zlata mostly kept to their room, except for listening to the evening news on the radio in the living room, which they all did together, in silence, as if they were at synagogue, Rosa thought, although, in truth, she’d hardly been to synagogue enough to know.
When the Rosenbaums headed out, every Saturday evening, to the Sabbath services, Rosa felt a strange pang of something almost like envy. To have that community, that certainty that there was a greater hand at work in the world! To not just be Jewish because of how you’d been born, but because youbelieved.The lack of faith in her own family felt, for the first time, like something she missed. She thought it would give her great comfort, if she had it, but, in truth, she did not even know where to look.
Still, the two families managed to get along, although Rosa suspected that while she was at work, her parents did not do much to welcome the young couple; the Rosenbaums were simply too different.
Now, as she scrubbed a pot in the Lyons kitchen, her arms aching, her hair falling in damp tendrils about her flushed face, Rosa couldn’t help but wonder about the future. She didn’t know what it held, but she was certainly starting to grasp what shedidn’twant it to hold… which was endless, ten-hour shifts washing pots in the stifling kitchen in the back of the Belsize Park Lyons teashop. Although, she acknowledged as she blew a sweaty strand of hair away from her face, the teashop’s manager, Winifred Hatley, had been kind to her.
She was strict but fair, and she’d given Rosa a chance, despite her limited English and decidedly German accent. Admittedly, she insisted, quite sternly, that Rosa stay in the kitchen and not show her face—or, more to the point, reveal her voice—in the actual dining area, but Rosa didn’t particularly mind that. The kitchen was managed by a round, affable cook named Hetty, who sang as she stirred and had accepted Rosa with a comfortable—and comforting—ease. Things could have, Rosa knew, been much worse.
But she still wanted something different—somethingmore—for her future. The trouble was, what it would be—and how would she go about obtaining it?
“Shift’s just about over,” Hetty told her as she swiped at her own shiny forehead. “Goodness, but it’s as hot as Hades in here! Go out and enjoy the cool of the day, love, while you can.”
Rosa smiled gratefully as she finished scrubbing her pot and laid it upside down on the dish drainer to dry. She hadn’t seen anything but this sink and its dirty pots for ten hours, save for the twenty minutes she’d taken to gobble down a meat paste sandwich, and she was desperate to get outside, to feel the cool evening air on her heated cheeks. Tomorrow was her day off and she had plenty of chores to do, but she also hoped to do something fun… go to a park or a museum, or maybe even try one of the English classes at the Jewish Day Center. She wasn’t sure yet what she’d do, but something.
Rosa said goodbye to Hetty and then stepped out into Belsize Park’s high street. It was eight o’clock in the evening, and the sun was just starting to sink below the buildings of white stucco, lighting the sky and turning the clouds vivid shades of orange and lavender. For a second, Rosa simply stood there, enjoying the moment and all it promised—freedom, possibility,hope.
Although, she acknowledged with a pang of anxiety, more and more there had been talk of war, both on the radio and inconversations she heard in the teashop. Still, she wasfreehere, free in a way she’d never been before. Free from the Nazis’ power, and also free from her own memories. She would not, she told herself as a young, laughing couple strolled past, enjoying the summer’s evening, think of Ernst, or who she’d been with him, as carefree and light as that woman who ambled past her, with her curled hair and her bright smile.
She’d been so carelessly untroubled by all the pain and worry around her, even when it had been thrust right in her face, thinking only of herself, of the happiness she’d found, fleeting and false as it had been. She wouldn’t, she resolved, let herself ever be like that again.
Slowly, her step sure and determined, Rosa headed for home, tilting her face to the last of the sun’s dying rays as the sky separated into striated strands of vivid color, more stunning than any artist’s canvas, a Monet or Renoir.
As Rosa let herself into the building, the persistent smell of sauerkraut and drains rose up to meet her in a stale, suffocating stench. The linoleum-tiled stairwell was dark and depressing, and she had to shrug off the sense of dread she felt at returning to the flat and, she suspected, her parents’ simmering displeasure and restlessness with this new, unwelcome life of theirs.
Sure enough, as she let herself in, her mother was in her usual armchair by the window, looking as if she’d been sitting there for hours, quietly fuming. The Rosenbaums were shut up in their room, the light seeping from under the door, and her father was nowhere to be seen. The cloying, clay-like smell of overcooked lentils hung like a miasma in the air; Zlata must have already made supper.
“Where’s Father?” Rosa asked as she closed the door and eased off her shoes; after ten hours of standing, her feet were aching. She glanced at the kitchen area, with its table andworktop, and thought she might make do with just some bread and cheese for their evening meal. She couldn’t stomach the thought of cooking, not after ten hours in a hot kitchen.
“How shouldIknow where he is?” her mother replied tetchily, staring determinedly out the window at the falling darkness, the bright colors of just a few moments ago now replaced with a muted palette of lavender and gray. A certain heaviness settled inside Rosa as she recognized her mother’s tone and what it meant. It hadn’t taken her father long, she thought with an inward sigh. It never did.
“Is he at that coffeehouse he likes to visit?” she asked, keeping her voice mild.
“He’s been gone all day.” Her mother’s voice rang with accusation, as if Rosa were to blame for this state of affairs, and in her mother’s warped mind, Rosa thought with a suppressed sigh, she probably was, at least in part. Somehow, her mother had found a way to blame Rosa for her husband’s indiscretions.
“He needs something to do,” she told her mother in that same mild voice, kept now with effort. “And so do you, Mother.”
“I am not the onegallivantingabout,” her mother snapped as she drew herself up, practically quivering in outrage.
“If you had something to do,” Rosa replied, gentling her voice even more, “perhaps you wouldn’t worry so much what Father is doing, wherever he goes. He’s probably only at the coffeehouse, talking to the other refugees about the better days, as he usually does.”
“Émigrés, Rosa, not refugees,” her mother corrected. “We are not destitute.”
