Читать книгу Five Silver Daughters - Louis Golding - Страница 16

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Alexander Smirnof quite soon made it worth Silver’s while. He found the little waterproof factory in a state of complete chaos. He introduced, and slowly, a hardly more than elementary system of business order, for anything at all complicated, or at all hurried, would have panicked Silver and his men into revolt.

Smirnof moved warily, even gracefully, like a rather plump cat. His courtesy was so unfailing that a word of protest burst on the lip like a bubble the moment it was formed.

He set up a brief system of standing orders, and a simple form of filing, simple but effective. Silver looked at Smirnof; the men looked at Silver; the gentle voice of Smirnof purred in his throat—then Silver and the men got down to the machines and tables again, and Smirnof down to his ledgers. Some of those workmen had been students of Kabbalah in their boyhood. But that was not a more mystical or exacting literature than Smirnof’s goods-received book and works-order book. The institution became waterproof in a double sense. There was no leakage of the unfinished material coming in or the finished material going out.

There was a system called “dead horse” prevalent among the waterproof manufacturers, or at least among the more vague-minded of the brethren, particularly during busy periods. A workman “finished out” his week’s work on a Friday morning. That day he would receive a fresh bundle of work. This bundle would carry him over into the next week, but he would expect to be paid for it that same Friday night. When next week came, the workman would be reluctant to get down to a piece of work he had already been paid for, if he might get down to a new bundle. Or there might be a rush order for a new type of garment. The “dead horse,” duly paid for by the boss, would be thrust out of sight. It might even be dumped into the river.

The following Friday created a new stock of “dead horse.” The carcasses were carried over and piled up till certain places stank with it. The contractor got very angry about it. Sam Silver scratched his head helplessly.

Smirnof took the abuse in hand. He daily supervised the workmen’s wage-books and checked them up against his own archetypal wage-book locked in a drawer. It took time and tact. The men scratched their heads and sighed a little, but accepted it all. They would have given two black eyes to bluster and kicked it downstairs. But all this suavity reduced them to a sort of sweet dither.

Sarah Silver was not given to deep probing into character or situation. Such a man as Alexander Smirnof was—the whole of him, quite irrespective of what he might be resolved into his parts—she had taken to herself, precisely as she took the casual Oleander Street babies to herself. But this baby was less casual. Night after night, month after month, they met in Silver’s kitchen, and repaired after some time to the parlour, the room officially consecrated to Silver love-making. These, too, were wordless lovers, even more than Esther Silver had been, and Joe Tishler, the carpenter. But it was clumsy to call Sarah and Smirnof lovers. She kissed his forehead as if he were her child. He fell asleep against her shoulder as if she were his mother. Now and again he took her to the Hallé concert, or he played chess of a night with Silver or Mr. Emmanuel. But he left his hand in hers, as if something queer might happen to him if he should let go.

But once, when they were alone in the parlour, she said something to him that had quite an odd effect upon him. He was lying cushioned upon her. This is what she said.

“Sasha, it’s a funny thing!”

He took no notice. He did not open his eyes.

“Sasha,” she repeated, “it’s a funny thing!”

He was not used to insistence on her part. He sighed lazily. “What’s a funny thing?”

“It’s a funny thing about me and father.”

“What do you mean, Sarah? There’s not been a quarrel?”

“No, no. I don’t mean that. I mean you and me and father.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know I’m not clever, Sasha. You won’t be cross?”

He grunted dimly.

“I sometimes feel that I’m—I’m only just here.”

“Thank God for that!” he whispered.

“And that father ... I mean if father had been a girl ... You’ve always been looking for a girl like father ... and you’ve found it now ... and ... you’ve found it now,” she repeated lamely.

He was lying cushioned upon her. When she had spoken, he lifted his head and shoulder from her bosom, thrust himself a foot away from her along the sofa, and placed his hands upon her shoulders. Then he stared with his grey remote eyes into her brown eyes for a full minute, for two minutes.

Then he said slowly, in a far forlorn voice: “Don’t talk like that!” A shiver seemed to pass through him. “You make me lonely.” He put his hand up to his eyes and covered them. With his eyes still covered, he said: “Do you know what you’re talking about?”

“Sasha, Sasha!” she cried, a catch in her voice. “I told you I wasn’t clever. What have I said? I have offended you?”

Then he said with more urgency: “Tell me, did you think I didn’t need a job?”

She was silent; her mouth quivered.

“Did you think I hadn’t gone days and days without food?”

“Please!” she implored.

“Didn’t you know I hadn’t got a shirt, not one, to my back?”

“I didn’t want to offend you!” she wailed. “I was only just talking!”

“You’ll never talk like that again, Sarah?”

“I promise!” she whispered.

He stared once again into the brown pools of her eyes, to reassure himself that there was nothing at all to see that for one moment he had feared to find there.

He sighed, like a child slipping off into nightmare who is wakened again, and finds the thing mere fantasy.

“Kiss me, Sarah!” he said. She kissed him. He came back along the sofa to her and rested his head against her bosom. She didn’t like to see him with his eyes still open, and still a little frightened. She kissed them both, and then closed them; so he slid away into sleep. Before long he was snoring gently.

Silver had no doubt Smirnof was clever. But he underrated his cleverness. He was quite incapable of measuring the skill with which his book-keeper insinuated into his hands the apparent initiative for his various innovations. He was induced to feel that, if not for himself, the systems of filing and checking might never have been introduced into the Silver factory, though he always gave Smirnof full credit for looking efficiently after the mere working details. He was not even surprised to make the discovery that he had harboured within himself these secret stores of business method.

Smirnof’s adroitness extended further. For he never introduced any innovation which the other relevant parties, whether they were Silver’s own workmen, or the contractors who entrusted him with their work, did not believe that Silver himself, with a little technical assistance from Smirnof, had sponsored.

The contractors smiled upon Silver. They had always believed in his good faith. They now admired his acumen.

“Why don’t you take in your own cutter?” they asked, as Smirnof had intended they should. Smirnof had a cutting-table built, and installed a “designer-cutter,” as he proudly called himself, to officiate at it. The profits forged upward.

Silver smiled on Smirnof.

“What did I tell you?” whispered Sarah.

“I am glad,” said Silver, “I took him on. He looked so miserable.”

“It was so kind of you to take me on,” said Smirnof. “It’s so rare to come across nowadays—an employer with go in him, who knows everything that’s going on all the time.”

“Please not to mention it,” bade Silver. “You are a great help to me, too.”

“Please!” urged Smirnof, and shrugged his shoulders to deprecate what little part he might have played in the improvement of the Silver business.

And then, one night before the year ended, Silver came home and asked for Sarah.

“She’s not in,” said Mrs. Silver. “Why?”

“I wanted to tell her about Smirnof.”

Esther happened to be in the kitchen at the time. “And what should it have to do with Sarah?” she asked a little dangerously.

“Oh, nothing, nothing particular!” he said hastily. He had known quite a long time which way things were going between Sarah and Smirnof. Nobody could pull wool over his eyes. And besides, what right had he to interfere, if a man and a woman happen to like each other, just because the woman happens to be his daughter? Was that her fault?

Mrs. Silver was not entirely so philosophical about it. She consoled herself dimly that someone had once said—it might have been Sarah herself—that Smirnof’s mother had been Jewish. “Well, half a Jew,” she muttered, “is better than no loaf!” and let Sarah and Smirnof get on with it.

But Esther wasn’t going to take things lying down. If there was any talk of her sister marrying a goy, even half a goy, they’d have to reckon with her first. In fact, Esther was becoming less of an anarchist every year. She probably had never been much of an anarchist, for she had always had ideas about Jews and non-Jews and marriages ... not at all the sort of ideas that were current in the Silver kitchen.

And now here was this pasty clerk, Harry Stonier, hanging round the place after May. She’d have to put her foot down heavily, and quite soon, too.

“What’s Smirnof got to do with Sarah?” she repeated.

“I only wanted to say,” Silver informed them all, “I’ve made Smirnof my manager to-day.”

“Oh!” said Esther. She was mollified. She knew Smirnof was a good business-man.

“Yes, my manager,” he repeated, with a rather magnificent gesture. “I shouldn’t be surprised,” he went on, “if we don’t make a little money, me and him working together. Though what we’ll do with it, if we do make some money ...” He paused. He stood there and scratched his head. Really, what would he do with money, supposing he should make some? He was happy. He had a wife he loved, and five daughters. And a nice house, in a lucky hour.

“Hannah!” he called out. “Hannah! If we should make some money, what should we do with it?”

“Do with it?” She looked startled. “Do with it?” She meditated a few moments, resting her chin upon her fist. Then suddenly she had a vision. Her father’s house. It stood in a wide quiet street. Grass grew between the cobbles. In front of the gate there was a grassy ditch crossed by a small bridge. There were green shutters lying back against the walls and friendly windows encased by them, overhung by fretted lintels. At the back of the house there was an orchard. The apricot-tree in the orchard. Her father’s house; and, before that, her father’s father’s house.

Mrs. Silver’s eyes shone. She clapped her hands like a child. “Let’s buy this house!” she cried. “Let’s live in our own house again!”

“Not me!” said Silver. “I never lived in my own house! You, Hannah, you: I will make it you a present! I will buy it in your name!”

“And the day it is my house——” she started with determination. “Yes, I will!” she went on, more feebly.

“You will what?” her daughters asked her.

“I will wear my pearls, my mother’s pearls!”

“And why not?” asked Esther, who was no true proletarian, and saw no wrong in a woman being bedizened with pearls, like any countess.

“You shall, mother, you shall!” sang May.

But Silver said no word. He went up to her and kissed her, as he kissed her one night long ago, when he had made a hooting like an owl and she crept to the door and went out to him where he stood by the apricot-tree. A long time ago this was, over in Terkass, in the Ukraine.