The Dream by Harry Bernstein Page A

said. ‘He still goes to school.’
    ‘Ah,’ said my grandfather. ‘And what is he going to be? A lawyer too, like his Uncle Saul?’
    Uncle Saul grinned. ‘I’m not a lawyer yet, Pop,’ he said. ‘I’m just hoping I’ll be one.’
    Uncle Saul was the only one of the family who had graduated from high school in America. He had planned on going further and studying law, but my grandmother had thought differently. He now worked as a door-to-door salesman selling magazine subscriptions. Now and then, evenings, I used to see him buried in a big thick law book, but those evenings had grown fewer and fewer, and he spent his time more often at the basement club to which he belonged and on taking girls out.
    My grandfather nodded at his comment and said, ‘Yes, yes, you will be one’ and for a moment he seemed to sober and the laughter died out. But he quickly recovered and turned to my brothers. ‘And you, Joe, and you, Saul? What are you going to be?’
    Joe answered promptly, ‘I’m going to be a journalist.’ It was something he had wanted to be in England when he was even younger than his present sixteen. Despite the fact that he had been thrust right into one of the tailoring shops after he left school, he had continued to have this ambition.
    Uncle Saul, who was sitting next to him, clapped an arm affectionately round his shoulders. He had taken quite a fancy to Joe and had introduced him to his basement club friends – the Rover Boys – and to some of the girls who frequented the club.
    ‘Don’t you worry about Joe. He’s going to be all right. I’ll see to that. Tomorrow I’m going to break him in to selling subscriptions. He’ll make a good living until he becomes a journalist.’
    ‘And you?’ my grandfather said, turning to my brother Saul, who had been sitting there uneasily with his face cast down, fearing the question because the answer would make people laugh at him.
    It was my mother who answered for him: ‘Saul is going to be a rabbi.’ She said it with pride, her face lighting up. It had been talked about before. Saul had always been devoutly religious. Since his barmitzvah he had taken to wearing tsitsis, a prayer shawl with long fringes that stuck out of the tops of his trousers, and every morning when he rose he put twilum round his head, a small leather box that contained a prayer with straps that fastened round his forehead and one arm. He held a siddar, a prayer book, in his hands and, rocking to and fro, he said the morning prayers.
    We had sometimes ridiculed him for it, but he persisted and evidently it meant a great deal to him. The tsitsis fringes showed quite clearly now, and my grandfather was looking at them and nodding his head, as if he approved.
    ‘The rabbi business is very good,’ he said. ‘People commit so many sins there is a great need for rabbis to give advice and forgive. I too wanted to be a rabbi once.’
    ‘You!’ cried Uncle Saul and Aunt Lily, and they both burst into laughter.
    ‘Yes, me,’ the old man said gravely. ‘Why not? I had a good start, a beard. And I knew all the prayers. My father taught them to me and he beat me if I didn’t say them, first thing in the morning, before every meal, after every meal, at night before going to bed. That was not counting the prayers I said in the synagogue. I was a regular prayer man.’
    It was hard to tell whether he was serious or joking. Only the eyes seemed to have a glimmer of amusement in them, and my grandmother gave a sound of what seemed like contempt and I heard her mutter, ‘He should live so! A rabbi, no less!’
    But now, suddenly changing the subject, my grandfather turned to Rose, who was sitting opposite me with that distant look on her face that she always had when she was among us. There was a touch of haughtiness mixed with it that separated her still further from us, and that she had affected along with an upper-class British accent ever since the days when we played at being rich in