Salted Apples

By Sarah Joshua

After her mothers untimely death, Rebecca Joseph assumes the responsibility of raising her three younger siblings in 1920s Calcutta. The siblings are used to poverty, but their troubles are exacerbated by a father who, despite religious tendencies, lives a life of excess.

When British soldiers arrive in Calcutta in the early 1930s, the lives of all in the Joseph family are changed forever and none more so than that of Rebecca herself.

This is a bittersweet look at an imperfect perfectionist and the far-reaching consequences of her decision to adopt out a wanted child to save family honor.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543471236

Sarah Joshua

Sarah Joshua was born into an Indian-Iraqi Jewish working class family and grew up in London, England. She has a PhD in genetics and works as a science teacher while raising two children in Israel.

Book preview

Part 1

Chapter 1

Nini babba nini,

Muck-an roe-ti chee-ni,

Muck-an roe-ti HOE-gya,

Sima babba soe-gya!¹

She gently patted the now-sleeping child with her miniature silk-skinned hands and began to replait her mane. Once ebony, it was now silver with yellow undertones. Of the three sisters, it was she who did not see the sense in dyeing hair. Though it could be said in many respects that vanity was her middle name, Rebecca took great pride in disclosing her impressive old age to all who would ask or even think of asking. It was the achievement of this feat that consolidated my theory as to why she was so keen to remain gray-haired with dignity; it was a stamp, a signature of the long-aspired-to eighty that kept her silver topped, in stark contrast to Matilda, the younger, who experimented with every gaudy color under the sun, in particular, those reds, which made her ruddy, unevenly pigmented skin appear yet ruddier.

The sandwich sister, my grandmother Trina, through fear of being discovered a fraud (she lied about her age as a youth more than sixty years ago to obtain a passport and authorization to travel to England and work), took to coloring her hair dark, warm brown. At least that’s what the packet of Loving Care by Clairol called it. To be quite frank, it always looked more chestnut to me, of the variety that was produced by the famous Christmas tree that wasn’t a Christmas tree, standing proudly next to the dirty blue pigeon muck-spattered bridge at the entrance to Bluebury. But then I suppose it would depend on whether you imagined the chestnuts to be cooked or otherwise or, of course, whether you were considering the nut itself or the nut in its shell. I was thinking of the latter in both cases. It always struck me as odd that they would call shades espresso or cappuccino. Everybody’s definition of cappuccino-colored is different, and anyway, since cappuccino is defined according to the physical status of the milk it is prepared with, it is ridiculous to cite it as a hue of brown.

Upon completion of the plaiting process, Rebecca took a further glance at the youngster and, with great effort, raised herself off her haunches, muttering ouf as she did so, and slowly made her way to the kitchen. There, Trina was frying chopped onions until the sharp odor made the entire house reek, the saucepan was blackened from the heat, and the onions reached a shade of dark, warm brown, assisted by the turmeric lavished generously upon them during the cooking process.

"Trina, you should hummiss² it with more oil so that the pateela won’t be ruined," Rebecca piped up, walking with her hands held together at the base of her spine, close to where the braided silver ended.

What? shrieked the sister, waving her right arm in such a manner that the hand twisted as if she were unscrewing a jam jar pending upside down in midair. "You think you’re teaching your grandmother to suck eggs, Bec-KAH? These fussy junglees don’t like fatty food. What to do?"

Ouf, what a bloody life … And on that note, Rebecca made an about-face and retreated to the lounge, to the couch not occupied by one of the junglees, my sister, Sima.

*

Yom Kippur, 1996

The three-piece, tomato-red suite in the lounge was the setting for probably one of the most memorable conversations I can remember in my life. The year was 1996, and while I cannot recall the date according to the Gregorian calendar, I am certain that it corresponded to the tenth Tishri, Yom Kippur, the most sacred day of the Jewish year. Being a fast, I made every effort to sleep until a little later than usual despite wanting very much to pray and beg forgiveness for the sins incurred during the previous twelve months. Yes, I was clearly cheating myself, but I didn’t mind. Coping for the whole day without studying for exams, thinking about food or drink, reading nonreligious matter, or simply switching on the television meant spreading my permitted tasks as efficiently as possible to make the time fly by.

My mother, upon completing the morning service by two thirty in the afternoon, had retired to her room to rest her eyes, and Sima and my grandmother Trina continued to toss and turn in their respective beds upstairs during the marathon lie-in, for which each was going for a record personal best. My aunt, by contrast, had become bored with gazing at the numerously fractured chewing-gum-white ceiling in the small room and had come downstairs to relieve the tedium and to watch the world go by. Certainly, she could obtain a better view from the giant window in the lounge with its spotless, gleaming glass (by virtue of my mother’s near-obsessive cleaning habits). It was far more comfortable than craning her neck around the majestic conifer obstructing the view from the comparably minute window in her bedroom. Not that there was so much activity outside anyway. It was a weekday afternoon in suburbia, and all were at work. The occasional cries of children playing in the street were still at least one hour away as school bells don’t ring until three thirty. So all was quiet. Rebecca thought that was just as well as it would only be a matter of time before the customary migraine would rear, and then every isolated murmur, however low in amplitude, would be enough to pierce the very center of a throbbing head.

Still, while Rebecca enjoyed the blessing of a thus headache-free Kippur, I, by contrast, was suffering my very first difficult fast. I felt as though Gene Krupa was practicing with Phil Collins on my poorly defended skull, and I arrived in the lounge as lying prostrate on my bed had little alleviated my condition.

Can’t you sleep, darling?

Nah, I’ve a splitting headache, and the time is really dragging today. They’ve all gone to bed, and I can’t face any more reading right now. Can’t you sleep?

I didn’t feel like it, Rebecca answered, absently stroking in the direction of the knap the deep crimson fur of the solitary couch upon which she was sitting after I had consciously stroked it against the grain in the nervous, irritable manner attributable to my aching head. I was thinking about the past, India, your grandmother, your aunt, the mansion in Chitpur Road, the house in Bentick Street, and your uncle Malachi’s shop in the New Market.

She talked for three hours, and I didn’t interrupt her. I cannot remember when my head stopped hurting or now as I tell this story why the conversation eventually ended. But it did, and I never again had the opportunity to listen to her tales of life in British Calcutta as she departed this world some twelve days later.

*

The old mansion on Chitpur Road was filled with a hum of activity. Men wearing kippot (skull caps) were chanting in a monotone, and the women, both young and old, were busy cooking and arranging food on rarely used china plates in a rush to be in time for the conclusion of prayers. A crying baby was being quieted by her elder sister. The latter, a youth of about fifteen, went essentially unnoticed in the crowd, but anybody observing would have noted that her corneas were smeared with red from the pressure incurred by staunchly guarding against the escape of even a single tear, and just below the collar of her burgundy smock was a small yet visible defect, a cut, exacerbated by ripping.

In the street, a young boy, whose striking resemblance to the child in wine identified him as of the same family, stood awkwardly in a creased white shirt and equally ruffled mid-length charcoal trousers with two neighbors of the same age, hands deeply buried in pockets, silent. It was just last week the boy had been the center of attention, having arrived at the milestone age of thirteen, Bar Mitzvah, the age at which he had donned a tallit and draped it adeptly over his narrow shoulders. He had stood proudly, like a seasoned thespian, on the bimah with his father and had read from the Bible at the famous Beth El synagogue. He thereby took upon himself the responsibilities of a man.

Yet now he had been relegated to childhood status. This was an affront that was causing him more agony in the presence of his peers, whose current companionship was superfluous to his immediate requirements, than the untimely loss of his mother at the age of thirty-five. What was he supposed to do? His initial disbelief upon returning from school was followed by a sharp panic, piercing his heart with a thousand spines and internally beating at his skull. He had cried for his mother’s immediate return, and it was this crime of weakness that had triggered the banishment from the house of mourning, complete with a bar of chocolate from the larder and the order to go out and play.

The hubbub of prayer reached a conclusion and was followed by a pause for refreshment in the hall. Under a baba and sumboosuk-laden table there, hidden by an oversized seersucker tablecloth, sat another child, alone in quiet contemplation. Her large, wide dark-brown eyes were dry, in contrast to those of her siblings. She had her jet-black hair parted in the middle, and two ropelike plaits were draped to either side of her elfin face. Her button-through sky blue cotton dress, ripped in an identical hallmark to that of her elder sister’s, was neatly worn, and she had placed her well-worn shoes to one side to expose her sore bunion-bearing feet, notably larger than the tatty leather apparel used to house them.

Sitting cross-legged under the table, the young girl leaned in occasionally, reaching forward with her tiny swarthy hands, perfectly camouflaged by beige flooring, to cup crumbs dropped by careless, hungry males gorging on the date biscuits and flaky pastry cheese sumboosuk pasties into neat little piles. Back and forward, using a smooth motion of the hands, she absently arranged the debris until it was in neat little mounds under the long woodworm-ravaged table.

*

Gone were the days of playing hockey after school in the maidan against a backdrop of the grand Victoria Memorial they’d finished building just a few years earlier. Gone was the feeling of liberty upon gazing up at the black-bronze figure standing proudly with bugle in tow and wondering how they got the monument of brilliant white marble to glisten so on hazy summer afternoons in the dry seasons. What remained now, pondered Rebecca in exhausted apprehension, were the shackles of responsibility, the soiled nappies dushen’d³ what seemed like hourly by the baby, and the ever-extending list of cooking and cleaning duties the servants now took advantage of shirking. The woman of the house had departed, and Rebecca remained, a bright girl but one whose equally bright demeanor had been dulled by the brutal onset of puberty and the loss of a mother when she was most needed.

Rebecca clutched her arms across her middle and bent over them. Her narrowed eyebrows had narrowed still further, and the skin puckered at the top of her nose, giving her a pained expression that she was responsible for exacerbating still further when her slightly buck teeth sank into her dried, flaky lips, drawing blood as they did so. Oof. I wish I’d been born a boy! She heaved a huge breath in, open mouthed, and was already tending the needs of the basket-borne burdensome bairn by the time she finally exhaled in one lengthy sigh.

*

I didn’t last too long at school after that. My patience dwindled to almost nothing over there, and I reserved it solely for tending to my younger sisters and my increasingly troublesome brother. Matilda was an imp from the moment she could crawl, and Trina’s suppressed aggression surfaced regularly in acute, violent explosions. It wasn’t easy keeping my father in line either, and in many ways, though his juvenile behavior was both irritating and embarrassing, it was more troublesome that it endangered the family unit and that far more than Malachi’s incessant eating and Trina’s daily playground misdemeanors.

*

The two girls hurried out of the house on Chitpur Road, Trina neatly organized and marching in brisk, deliberate steps, followed by her elder sister, elephant-like by comparison to the graceful manner exuded by Trina, and, of course, still getting dressed. After hoisting up a persistently disobedient pop sock, Rebecca made a short sustained spurt and caught up with her sister at the entrance to Park Street, wherein the Jewish Girls’ School was situated.

The new head teacher had barely completed the task of reprimanding the wayward Trina for yesterday’s bullying episode before Rebecca approached the foreboding office of the stonelike Ms. Guppy. Her thoroughly unexpected presence for insolent behavior toward a member of staff was inconsequential to the principal, who had already concluded that the family was a bad seed and could use being made an example of. And so Rebecca was expelled from the school for throwing a pile of books at the acerbic Mrs. Isaac, the geography teacher, who sent the nerve-frayed adolescent over the edge by instructing her to change her slightly stained button-down blouse to a spotless garment Rebecca well knew was currently unavailable at home. So be it, she thought, in full awareness that it may damage her long-term ability to find a good station in life but also intrinsically accepting that it would assist her in keeping a tighter control of the domestic situation. The assistance of her numerous aunties was appreciated, but it fell well short of requirements.

That same day, Trina, in proud defiance of her superiors, flatly refused to sit on a platform with children in the form beneath her own, preferring the alternative of keeping company with those congregated outside the caustic Guppy’s office. A green-eyed form mate of corpulent shape with thick elliptical spectacles perched on an ample koobah nose and failing to conceal a conspicuously positioned mole above her right nostril sat close by. Her sneering reference to Trina’s repeated presence there on account of poor behavior and the taunting celebration of her knowledge of the elder sister’s expulsion for what essentially had been a crime of poverty prompted Trina to stand. The feline-formed felon arrogantly swaggered over to the bespectacled antagonist and, with a wicked glint in her eye, made a double handed and deliberate tug at the challenger’s plaits until the latter shrieked in pain. Mind your own bloody business, Trina muttered as she sauntered, unruffled, into the head’s office for her second visit in as many hours.

*

Roly-poly Malachi balanced on his wooden chair in the center of his classroom at the Talmud Torah boys’ school his father was proud to be sending him to. His ever-expanding girth could be attributed to a lack of control he had acquired either genetically down the paternal line or environmentally via the near hero-worship of his father. He ate whenever opportunity presented itself, and though the family was poor, there was always enough for the only son, who was also petted by the Muslim workers who assisted the ten families in the mansion. Malachi loved to study religion and found solace in prayer after the death of his mother, who had also doted on him for having done her the honor of being born male. Alas, this was yet insufficient to plug the gaping cavity left in his soul by her untimely death, and he ate to acquire comfort in a manner that would, in middle age, lead to his undoing.

The rabbi called upon the boy to read aloud a passage, and with great confidence and fluency, Malachi carried out the task using the appropriate intonation a cantor’s son would have been proud of. He loved to accompany his father to the Beth El synagogue on a Friday night, as he had precious little time with him during the week, for one reason or another. After his father finished making the kaddoos⁴ blessing with the raisin juice devotedly prepared by Rebecca during the daytime, they would eat shooftas kebabs, chicken, aloo makullahs, and pilau, a feast fit for kings, and later, Malachi would learn the Torah parasha of the week with his father, who seemed far more patient on a Shabbat than on weekdays. The rabbi praised his accurate pronunciation and crystal clear enunciation, and Malachi smiled, flushed slightly, and continued to daydream as his peers continued to read from holy texts.

Yes, Malachi would make his father proud; he would be a successful rabbi. Or at least that was what he was thinking seriously about when he confided his dream to his elder sister, who promptly poured ice-cold water all over the idea, reminding him of the impecuniosity of the family. Rabbis in training do not make money, and that meant he needed a trade. His love of pastries, pasties, and confectionary led him to the famous Nahoum bakery, where he lied about his age and began an apprenticeship.

*

Jeremiah Joseph slouched over the kitchen table upon returning from work at the docks and stared blankly into the bowl of scalding hot doll⁵ soup his daughter had placed in front of him. He appeared to be neither waiting for her to produce the rice or the bargee she had made as accompanying dishes nor for the lentils to get cool. He was oblivious to the steam rising from the soup and misting up his glasses. The absence of Iraqi Arabic spoken in dulcet tones by his departed wife was causing him distress. He could not accustom himself to this Maryam-free climate, just as he could never eat and enjoy food without huge quantities of salt. It seemed bizarre to use such an analogy at such a juncture, particularly when talking about a man grieving for his wife, but reader, such was the case that it was love that he was accustomed to rather than that which was all-embracing, warm, and affectionate, which he had felt when Maryam had been alive. Not that this made the situation any less painful; Jeremiah was a creature of habit, a draconian with respect to routine and also to vice. His middle children, Malachi and Trina, had inherited this facet of his personality, Malachi with respect to excesses and his sister with respect to routine and order. Nepotism was rife in male-oriented Calcutta, so while Jeremiah had been a disciplined soldier in his youth, it was Malachi whom he had chosen as the more beloved of the two and Trina who had donned the clothes of a black sheep.

Trina got a diligent thumping upon her return from school that day. She thought herself lucky, though, that Jeremiah knew only that she had given a serve to one of the students and had landed herself in trouble. Had he known that she was routinely playing havoc into the lives of her teachers, she would have been in for a real hammering. She also considered herself more fortunate than her contemporaries, for when they were on the painful end of a lambasting from a parent, they would be reminded of it each time they would look at the scars. This, in the eyes of many a furious father, was an effective deterrent to subsequent rule breaking. Thus, the child would not give them cause to repeat the punishment again in the future. Jeremiah was unlike those men. Just as strict, he would not knowingly hurt his child to the point of scarring him or her. Instill the fear of the Almighty into him or her, yes, but to leave a lasting physical reminder, to him that was tantamount to abuse and against the teachings of the Torah, for which he had respect. He was a good student. So Trina did consider herself lucky, relatively speaking. She would make sarcastic comments to both Rebecca and Malachi, who would often whine about something or other to transmit to them that they, in fact, were better off, the white sheep of the family.

At length, the stolid Jeremiah sipped at his lentil soup and winced as he had let it cool excessively, making it unpalatable, and wiped his mouth with a clean jaran⁶. Rebecca took her cue, promptly removing it from the table to reheat it while her father appropriated a newspaper resting on the chair beside him and began to study. Rebecca sighed quietly and closed her eyes briefly in reluctant acceptance of what promised to be another tight week financially as Jeremiah seemed to be in prime mood for some serious gambling.

Chapter 2

Four years had passed since Maryam had died, and the middle Joseph children, known in the family as the sandwich kids, were gradually becoming more independent. Malachi had started his apprenticeship, and Trina was a prickly teen, oozing natural talent and excelling without really trying at school. Both had their own circle of friends and would spend little time at home. Rebecca remained, in stoic attachment to her father’s home, and devoted to the bringing up of his youngest daughter. Matilda was quite a handful, and Rebecca was grateful that she only had her to worry about at this time as Jeremiah was particularly difficult to both appease and prevent from excessive gambling.

*

Exiting the Beth El synagogue on Pollock Street on a hazy spring afternoon, Rebecca hastily ran into the road to cross it and collided with the full force of a lone car, albeit slow-moving, whose driver was surely not expecting her. The girl lost consciousness momentarily and, upon awaking, was being examined by a thoroughly sorry specimen less than a year or so her senior. The gormless youth, an instant after Rebecca opened her eyes, began to stammer apologies by the dozen. The dazed female could not concentrate on such matters as her mind was elsewhere. Her brother had lost a fortune on the races and had landed them in debt up to their eyeballs as the bets had been placed with borrowed money. She had decided to sell two of the twenty-two-karat choories that Maryam had left her and felt sure that would get the family back on an even keel. She had tried them on that morning, alone in her room, desperately searching for an alternative. She remembered she had smiled wistfully in wonder at how small her mother’s wrists had been to accommodate such delicate jewelry. Each time she was reminded of this, she felt another pang of guilt that she was selling memories for money. She blamed herself for letting the situation get out of hand.

The young man, having started, could not now refrain from looking intently at her. He was of small stature, wore a gentle expression assisted by large slightly downward slanting almond eyes in both shape and hue, and had the beginnings of a fine, narrow mustache. He evidently did not need to shave regularly as his stubble was rather patchy, and it did not appear that he had less than perfect vision. That said, he had just been involved in a traffic accident.

Rebecca was now acutely aware of the attention being bestowed upon her and flushed scarlet. She was little used to such behavior as most of the boys in the neighborhood thought her rather plain. Josh, on the other hand, was drinking in the rosy cheeks, her jet-black hair, and the perfect roundness of her ample bosom, smiling and sighing as he did so.

Hurriedly straightening her bronze-and-bottle-green skirt, patterned with a miniature tessellating hexagonal design, the embarrassed teen nodded awkwardly, darting her eyes in a downward motion to resist their magnetic attraction to those of Josh, and thanked him for his concern. She quickly muttered that there was no harm done and excused herself, making a concerted attempt to conceal the limp that resulted from the collision, pushing herself to her destination as fast as possible to effect her mission.

Upon arrival at the pawnbrokers’, Rebecca used the glass cabinet opposite the counter to assist her in adjusting a couple of hairpins whose positions had altered in the fall on Pollock Street. This took a little longer than usual as she was still slightly dazed from both the momentary loss of consciousness, the dull yet increasingly prominent pain in her now-swollen ankle, and the memory of the boy who had been the culprit as well as her knight. The pawnbroker entered moments after Rebecca had rung the bell to call him and agreed a good price for the bangles the girl was reluctant but resigned to selling.

And so they were gone, two of the eight bangles that had been the only material legacy of her late mother. No matter, thought Rebecca, who, practical as ever, was determined that the children would not starve. She would just have to keep a tighter handle on the males in the family.

As the girl neared home, she became acutely aware of the clickety-clack of sandals on the pavement behind her, approaching her and finally coming to a halt as they caught up with her. Glued to her position now, Rebecca, incredulous, was faced by Josh, who, panting from his exertions to meet the girl again, greeted her with a jolly smile and a breathless salutation. He had lately become accustomed to traveling by car, purchased through savings from a year of working as a local trainee journalist in Howrah, so was more than a little unused to physical exercise. He followed his hello again with an inquiry after her health and another profuse apology, explaining that he had waited for her to exit the pawnbrokers’ and was about to approach her, only to be interrupted by a cousin who had not ruffled his hair and teased him about his chubby face for ages. Needless to say, arms waving wildly in excited exasperation, he was, therefore, left with little option but to scan the street as she limped down it in the hope that he could catch up before she disappeared. He owned that it was a rather bold, brazen thing to do but was determined to offer to be of assistance if at all possible, explaining that he lived close by and worked odd hours so could be available to carry from the market and so forth if she ever needed it.

Flattered by the attention but still perplexed, Rebecca expressed her gratitude in a more mature, measured manner on this occasion and then, at a loss for how to develop the conversation, regressed into a childish pose and began to search desperately for an escape route. Unperturbed, the youth, less gormless-looking now than when he exited his vehicle all flustered, insisted on accompanying Rebecca home. They walked without speaking, but Josh gently whistled the Jolson hit You Made Me Love You all the way, the sweet, clear notes finally putting his female companion at ease. She was unacquainted with the music of Jolson, given that the Joseph family owned neither a gramophone nor a radio, so was unaware that it was a love song and that she was