Julius (16 page)

In the evenings he would pore over advertisements in a cheap newspaper, straining his eyes by light of a gas-jet, and there would be announcements to clerks, accountants, bank assistants, positions he knew he would be able to hold with the minimum of taxation to his brain, but because he was an alien it would be useless to apply for them, and he must turn the page to the humbler columns, for apprentices, errand boys, ironmongers, shoe-blacks, any form of employment. He bent over the dirty, well-thumbed paper, seated in the corner of a public-house, and the shouting and laughter of the men around the bar was loathsome to him, but he must suffer their presence because there was some warmth in the smoke-laden atmosphere and he could not return to Elsa and her white face before he had put some drink inside him and could bluff her with the lies that he was doing well.

When he became errand boy, cleaner and general slave-of-all-work to the surly baker, Grundy, in Holborn, he did not tell Elsa at first for fear she should think less of him. And when she saw that his hours away from her were long, from very early morning until late in the evening, he explained as carelessly as he could that he had found work, excellent work, connected with flour and bread-making; and when she would come to visit him in the day, proud of him, he told her that this business was far away in the City and she would not be able to find it alone. She supposed that he was making good money, and he answered her that his pay, though moderate at first, would eventually be generous; nor when she enquired excitedly the exact amount he gained a day did he attempt to turn the sum into francs, putting her off with: ‘Don’t bother me, little plague.’

So Julius, sweeping the crumbs from the floor of the shop, putting back the shutters, setting forth with a basket on his arm, leaning with rolled sleeves and dripping face over the bakery fires, shouted at and cursed by Grundy who, tortured by rheumatism, possessed the shortest of tempers, showed never a sign of impatience or anger, but answered: ‘Certainly, Mr Grundy,’ ‘No, Mr Grundy,’ ‘Coming immediately, sir,’ ‘What can I do for you, madam?’ softly, obsequiously, a smile on his face, but thinking: ‘This is not for long - one day, one day ...’

He would be tired, yes, but never mind about that, he did the work of three men and he had a commission on the new clients who bought bread and a percentage on the weekly orders. He possessed the quality of looking ahead, though no one might understand him. It was busy and central, that thoroughfare of Holborn; traffic would increase with the years, property would double its value, and this shop of Grundy’s where he toiled as underpaid assistant adjoined other shops and other premises, buildings that could be bought or demolished, or built upon; and this fellow Grundy was an old man with no son to carry on his business, he’d be glad enough to be rid of it in a year or so. To watch something spread itself and develop under your own eyes, reaching out tentacles here and there, gathering other things into its power, and growing day after day, year after year - a business that became a concern, and a concern that made a profit, and a profit that made a fortune, and a fortune that bought power, there was a dream and a thing of beauty, a dream that held the promise of reality.

To Julius Lévy there was ecstasy in this secret life of his; the knowledge that he could not fail was like a hidden jewel worn against his skin, to be touched and caressed in the darkness with warm sensuous fingers; nor would he share the brilliance of his secret with anyone in the world. These English people were pawns in the game. Old Grundy, who called to him: ‘Lévy - I want you here,’ ‘Lévy - do this, do that . . .’ - he was like some poor old blustering fowl running hither and thither in his little span of existence.

They were nothing and no one, thought Julius, these people he jostled on the crowded pavements when the day’s work was done, these lumbering carts, these plodding omnibuses with their tired horses, these mud-splashed hansoms cloppoting towards the West End with the blazing lamps and the theatre crowds. He stood amongst them, the sound of the traffic in his ears, the sharp cries of a little newsboy running forward with a late edition, this was London and he was part of it, but it could not control him; he would rise above it and use it as he wished.

‘You never talk to me,’ complained Elsa, stroking the back of his shoulder. ‘You are always so silent nowadays when you come back. There you go, thinking, watching - what are you thinking about?’

‘But leave me alone, can’t you?’ he would say, and throwing open the window of their poky room in Clifford Street, he would lean out far into the street, his head lifted as though there were music in the air, and a smile upon his face that was secretive and strange.

He was queer, this Julius of hers, for there was nothing beyond the open window but the ugly grey roofs and chimney pots stretching in endless vista as far as the eye could reach, the hum and throb of traffic, the rumble of wheels, the whistles of trains, the noisy, cockney screams of children playing in the street, the hideous trill of a barrel-organ mingled with the scraping finger scales played on the piano of the house opposite.

The tumult and misery of this dwelling-place would seem to her sometimes like a weight upon her heart, and she would close her eyes and summon in one breath the sweet smells and the distant cries of the Kasbah, the amber and spice and the crushed petals of bougainvillea flowers that would never be hers again, and ‘Where are we going?’ she thought. ‘Why must this happen to us?’

The open window drove smoke down the chimney and the cold air rushed into the room; nor did he mind, bareheaded, sleeves rolled up, lost in his dreams. She shivered, and coughed, her hand to her throat.

‘Shut the window.’ But he did not answer; he waited a moment, and then turned to her, smiling, the same strange smile upon his lips, and he said to her:

‘Listen - can you hear it? - listen.’

He held out his arm and she went to him, and together they leant out of the little window to the street below, and all she could hear was this continuation of the hum of traffic, the ugly sound that must haunt her now for ever, and - ‘What do you mean? I can’t hear anything,’ she said.

He took no notice of this, but drew her close against his side, and he said to her: ‘Someone should make music out of this.’ She leant her cheek against his.

‘I don’t like to think about it,’ she told him. ‘It’s too big for me. It makes me seem such a little wretched thing. I’m only a speck amongst all this, with no will; it makes me wonder why I believe in God.’

When she said this, shyly, as though it were dragged from her, he let her go from him, and he laughed and spread out his hands as though he could gather the atoms that floated as particles of dust upon the air.

‘God!’ he said. ‘Believe in God? Why, I tell you that all of this belongs to me and I can give it to you.’

She stared at him, half frightened, half unsure of what he had said; it was as though he had shouted his words until they had found an echo in her heart, and he stood there with his eyes blazing, demoniacal and cruel, his hands opening and shutting as one who grasps a treasure; he towered above her sinister and strange.

She backed away, startled at the change in him, the strength and the pallor of his face.

‘Don’t!’ she said. ‘Don’t talk in that way - I don’t like it; you look different, you frighten me. I don’t want you to be like that.’

He stood over her, blocking the light from the window. He would not take his eyes from her face; he was terrible, he was changed, like someone who talks in his sleep.

‘Yes, all of this is mine,’ he repeated. ‘I shall give it to you. Anything you want. It will belong to me.’

Now he had frightened her, now she thought he must be mad or had been drinking. Yes, she was afraid. The loneliness and misery of these months in London seemed to culminate in a great wave of despair and close in upon her heart.

‘I don’t want you to be like that,’ she cried. ‘I don’t want you to give me things. I want us to be home in Alger in a little house, just the sun and the flowers and being happy, and you shall sell in the market-place and I will look after you and give you children.’

She began to cry, closing and unclosing her hands.

‘Julius, my darling, my darling - let’s go home now, before it’s too late, away from this cold unhappy country. I’ve been so miserable here, so terribly miserable.’

Then he smiled; he held out his arms and pulled her to him; he was not a stranger any more but himself again, his hands running over her, his lips in her hair.

‘Why, my little silly, my little absurd love, I haven’t said anything. What are you chittering and whimpering about? You deserve to be beaten. I shall beat you and thrash you. You little foolish, you little nonsense.’

She thrust her head under his chin, she clung to him like a child and demanded to be comforted, and half drugged, she listened to his voice in her ear, calling her ‘his love, his own Mimitte,’ funny words she did not understand, but which seemed to assure her that she would be happy again.

‘Are you cold?’ he asked her.

‘No, not any more,’ she said.

‘I can feel you, shivering and trembling,’ he said, ‘silly one that you are. Are you hungry, too!’

‘Yes, I’m hungry.’

There was a thin watery soup and bread, and a scrap of butter; and then the fire must die down lest they should burn and waste the wood.

‘If we were in Alger now,’ sighed Elsa, ‘we’d be sitting by an open window.You know how the sky is there at night. The air smells different, too, queer and spicy, sometimes moss and scent float down on it from the trees in Mustapha.’

He was sitting on the floor, his head against her knee.

‘In Ahèmed’s house the dancing girls are painting their heels and their nails,’ he said lazily. ‘Naïda is smoking a cigarette and blowing rings into the air, and Lulu is scolding one of the new girls for running away with her ear-rings. I can hear the jingling of her bangles. Down below the musicians are throbbing the drum, and one of them breathes on his pipe, a thin reedy note. It would be warm in the dancing room to-night, Elsa, all the old men huddled together and clutching themselves, and the dust rising from the floor as Naïda stamps and shakes herself. Do you want to be there?’

She would not answer. Supposing she told him the truth and he sent her back?

‘I like to be wherever you are,’ she said.

But he must go on with his teasing of her, hiding his laughter at her pain.

‘Think of the sun in Alger, and the food, and the low divan where you used to sleep. That’s better than this, isn’t it? Look at this bare, empty room, and the old iron bedstead, and the ashes of that fire. You don’t like it, do you?’

She would not give way, though.

‘I love you,’ she said. He took no notice of this. It did not come into his scheme of things at all, this business of words and protestations. She could murmur and whisper if she liked, it was all the same to him.

‘At least there’s one way we can keep warm,’ he said, and pulled her up from the floor, thinking of Nanette with a sigh; and she said anxiously, peering into his eyes:

‘You do love me, don’t you? Tell me you do.’

‘Of course, little idiot; be quiet, anyway,’ and she must be content with that.

Later, when he woke suddenly in the middle of the night for no reason but because she had stirred against his shoulder, he thought clearly as though a cold light had broken into his brain: ‘I’m hungry and poor and cold - but I’m happy - I’m happy. This won’t come again.’

And as he knew this and held it to him, the thing was gone from him, out of his reach, and he whimpered subconsciously like a lost child, and fell asleep and was alone again.

It was often a mystery to old Grundy that his assistant Lévy, this Jew fellow, should work so hard. It surely was not for the money, a low enough wage at any consideration, but with scarcely a word he seemed even from the beginning to have grasped the essentials of the business and to bear all responsibilities upon his shoulders.

The financial side of the little shop was taken in hand most admirably by this new-comer, the week’s takings invariably showed a profit instead of the old deficiency. He had a good manner with the customers, too, and more than this, he had a way of arranging the shop that attracted a passer-by. He knew how to dress a window, he set the cakes and the bread to view in a tasty manner for all the world like a smart confectioner. It was a relief, when you were getting old, thought Grundy, to have someone at hand so reliable and strong who didn’t fuss you, who worked smoothly, who, as it were, ran the whole concern for you. Just a Jewish fellow, a foreigner of sorts who had begged for a job two years past as though he had come to the end of his tether and demanded a charity, and now bore the whole brunt of the work and made Grundy comfortably aware that there wasn’t any need for him to stir from the back parlour behind the shop. To get up late in the mornings, to sit with a newspaper on his knee and blink at it over his spectacles, to take a walk along Holborn and watch the traffic, to look now and again in at the shop and see Lévy behind the counter and customers standing, it was all very pleasant and made him feel he didn’t have to think or bother about things.