Read Online Scraps of Heaven by Arnold Zable - Free Book Online

storm takes hold. It descends quickly, and even the most obstinate boys must scurry back to their homes.
    The square is empty, the streets are deserted. Except for Bloomfield. He walks under an umbrella. He rejoices at the lightning. It tears open the sky. The earth is churning beneath his feet. The storm drains are flowing over. Bloomfield’s shoes and the hems of his trousers are soaked. ‘Yes,’ he hums. ‘Yes. Yes.’ He spirals from street to street, back to the epicentre, Curtain Square. He spreads a plastic sheet on the park bench, sits back, glances up at the spitting skies, and laughs.
    Everything is swaying: the swings, the cyclone fence, the trees, their sodden leaves. And Bloomfield. He rocks back and forth. And his father is standing above him, swaying at prayer. His shawl cracks in the wind. His hair is turning white. The synagogue is burning, and his father is running from the flames. But Bloomfield is further back, in the time before the deluge. A time when the wind did not taste of ash and blood.
    The summer is drawing to an end, yet February is the hottest month. Seven weeks have flown by and Zofia’s new false teeth are finally in place. She wears her evening best, a short-sleeved black dress. Romek is wearing his one and only suit, pinstriped, creased and pressed. Josh is imprisoned in grey trousers, a grey jacket, grey cap, with a grey tie over a white shirt. And they are seated in the Empire Ballroom at tables covered in white cloths, and the main course is being served—slabs of schnitzel, potato salad, kosher chicken and liverwurst, washed down with glasses of red. After all, Cousin Naomi has just been wed.
    And the boys are standing at the mike, on the makeshift stage, in their tuxedos. Four big boys in a row, Schneider, Goodman, Aronson and Hirst, arms linked, they move as they croon, two black shoe steps left, two steps right, the boys are in full flight:
    Another bride, another groom,
The countryside is all in bloom.
The flow’rs ’n trees is,
The birds and bees is,
Making whoopee.
    And their eyes are rolling ever wider, and their shoes are glittering like mica, and the young men at the tables are laughing and winking, and Josh is thinking, what does it mean to be making whoopee?
    Another year, or maybe less,
What’s this I hear? Or can’t you guess?
She feels neglected,
And he’s suspected,
Of making whoopee.
    And the song is over, the applause dying down, and Uncle Yossel, father of the bride, is exclaiming, ‘Nu? Doesn’t anyone sing a Yiddish liddele anymore?’ And Dobke is running to the podium, a rotund woman dressed in a hip-tight red satin dress, she flounces on red pumps as she runs, a string of pearls dangles from her neck, her lips and fingernails are painted red. Yet no matter how hard she tries, she looks like a shtetl woman, even as she steps up to the mike, and exclaims: ‘I once had what they call in English “sex appeal”.’ And Uncle Yossel, at the head of the bridal table, shakes his head and quips, ‘I never noticed.’
    But Dobke does not mind. She has a stage, a captive audience, a mike in her hand, and an army of guests at her command. ‘This is a liddele , a little song, for the groom and bride. For Naomele, whom I have known since was a little meidele , and what a beautiful girl she was, may she be protected from the evil eye. And it is for Efrem, such a handsome man, may he live long and be healthy and strong, but Naomi be warned, love is a fickle game and men are dangerous, and who should know better than I, because I once used to have what is called “sex appeal”.’
    Black cherries are chosen,
And green ones are left on the bough.
Beautiful girls are courted,
And plain ones are left behind.
    And she points to herself as she sings, Dobke the Yiddish theatre extra, forever consigned to be the eccentric aunt, the professional mourner, the market woman, an ageing bubba in