Illywhacker

"Don't listen to her, Leah," Lenny called. "This is her hobby-horse."

"They dressed like they had no hope. It is capitalism, I told them, that is bleak, not socialism. When there is a revolution the people should wear wonderful clothes, streamers, flags, balloons. It should be full of joy and love, not look like a funeral. Do you like picnics?"

Leah Goldstein smiled. "Yes, I do, very much."

"Would you like to come for a picnic with me, one day when you are free?"

"Yes."

"Good," said Rosa smiling, "now I am cheered up," and she laughed. "I apologize for my mood."

The two women sat on the concrete step smiling at each other.

13

Leah Goldstein would leave the Kaletskys that night with a splitting headache. She had laughed too much, heard too much, eaten too much peculiar food. There had been discord, vulgarity, and such shifts in mood, from sombre to carefree and back again, that she became lost and dizzy. She had drunk a glass of sweet wine on the grass beneath the orange tree, patted the dog, and heard Rosa's life story, how her young mother had run away from her father and walked all the miles from Poland to Vienna, how they had arrived to find her mother's uncle all packed to go to Australia and how they had gone too. Her uncle, a cultured man, had disliked Australia and within a year he was packing all his books again and dragging his family across the seas, this time to Palestine. Rosa's mother had wanted to go, but the uncle would not pay – she had taken a goyim for a lover and was out of favour. Later the goyim left but she had found another, a man who ate fire for a living. The story went on and on, while the men, sitting in the shade with a bottle of beer, called out their teasing comments.

Rosa had left the Communist Party when they turned on Trotsky and talking about this she began, quite inexplicably, to cry and Leah, bewildered, quite out of her depth, could do nothing to comfort her but pat – she felt so inadequate – the back of her hostess's honey-coloured hand while the dog leapt up and licked her face.

Then Lenny announced he would bend a bar of steel between his teeth and Rosa stopped crying and began teasing him, saying he was an old man trying to impress a young girl and Leah blushed and became uncomfortable. She looked at Izzie who was sitting on the laundry steps, and he smiled at her, and raised his eyebrow in the direction of his cock-sparrow father who was, at that moment, fossicking in one of the rusty forty-four-gallon drums, looking for a piece of suitable iron.

"Too thin," said Izzie when his father held up a piece of bolt-studded metal. "Thicker, thicker."

Lenny frowned, hesitated, and went back to the bin. Finally he found a piece of steel rod that Izzie applauded. The dog raced round and round the yard barking and Rosa was again tranquil as she lifted her handsome face to the sun.

"Do you like to dance?" she asked Leah, but Lenny was now standing before them. He insisted Leah pick up the bar, even though it was oily.

He placed the bar between his stained teeth, shut his eyes, positioned his pale legs like a weight-lifter and began to pull down on it with both hands.

The bar began to bend, but then Lenny pulled a face. He took the bar out of his mouth and spat into his hand. He looked at what was in his hand and looked up and grinned. He had broken two teeth.

"You silly man," said Rosa Kaletsky. "Oh, you silly man." But she did not seem upset about her husband's teeth and indeed neither did Lenny, who having rinsed his mouth out with beer, went back to sit by his son.

Rosa began to quiz her about her family and pretended to be shocked that they observed none of the Jewish customs, not even Passover. She had never heard of matzo, never tasted the bitter herb, never waited, impatiently, for the moment when she could eat the charoset.

"Ha," Rosa called out to her son. "So you were bringing home a nice Jewish girl to meet your mother."

Izzie looked uncomfortable but smiled.

"A Presbyterian, a shiksah. Oh dear," she laughed and Leah's face hurt from trying to smile against the current of her embarrassment.

"Shut up, Rosa," Izzie said, suddenly serious.

"Don't you 'shut up' to me, mister," Rosa snapped, fiercely. "You wash out your mouth."

There was silence amongst the combative, confusing Kaletskys for a moment and then Lenny began to explain to Leah that he was not a real Jew either, that his mother had been a shiksah, a dancer in Ballarat who stole Lola Montez's Spider Dance.

"Her name was MacDonald. You never met a woman so kosher. We had two sets of everything, two sinks, two sets of bowls for cooking. By the time she was sixty she looked like a Jew," he giggled. "Her nose grew. She was very pious. When my father died we had to sit on the floor formonths. Poor dear Sheila, oh dear."

"A nasty old woman," said Rosa.

"Not very nice," Lenny admitted, feeling inside his mouth with his finger. "I broke a gold one too."