The Fourth Estate Read Online Free PDF Page B

street without
looking back.
    Lubji couldn’t
sleep that night. He kept repeating over and over to himself the words Mr.
Lekski had said. The following morning he was standing outside the shop long
before the old man had arrived to open the front door. The first lesson Lubji
learned from Mr. Lekski was that people who can afford to buy jewelry don’t
rise early in the morning.
    Mr. Lekski, an
elder of the town, had been so impressed by the sheer chutzpah of the
six-year-old child in daring to enter his shop with nothing more than a few
worthless coins, that over the next few weeks he indulged the son of the cattle
trader by answering his constant stream of questions.
    It wasn’t long
before Lubji began to drop into the shop for a few minutes every afternoon. But
he would always wait outside if the old man was serving someone. Only after the
customer had left would he march in, stand by the counter and rattle off the
questions he’d thought up the previous night.
    Mr. Lekski noted
with approval that Lubji never asked the same question twice, and that whenever
a customer entered the shop he would quickly retreat into the comer and hide
behind the old man’s daily newspaper.
    Although he
turned the pages, the jeweler couldn’t be sure if he was reading the words or
just looking at the pictures.
    One evening,
after Mr. Lekski had locked up for the night, he took Lubji round to the back
of the shop to show him his motor vehicle. Lubji’s eyes opened wide when he was
told that this magnificent object could move on its own without being pulled by
a horse. “But it has no legs,” he shouted in disbelief. He opened the car door
and climbed in beside Mr. Lekski. When the old man pressed a button to start
the engine, Lubji felt both sick and frightened at the same time. But despite
the fact that he could only just see over the dashboard, within moments he
wanted to change places with Mr. Lekski and sit in the driver’s seat.
    Mr. Lekski drove
Lubji through the town, and dropped him outside the front door of the cottage.
The child immediately ran into the kitchen and shouted to his mother, “One day
I will own a motor vehicle.” Zelta smiled at the thought, and didn’t mention
that even the rabbi only had a bicycle. She went on feeding her youngest
child-swearing once again it would be the last. This new addition had meant
that the fast-growing Lubji could no longer squeeze onto the mattress with his
sisters and brothers. Lately he had had to be satisfied with copies of the
rabbi’s old newspapers laid out in the fireplace.
    Almost as soon
as it was dusk, the children would fight for a place on the mattress: the Hochs
couldn’t afford to waste their small supply of candies on lengthening the day.
Night after night, Lubji would lie in the fireplace thinking about Mr. Lekski’s
motor car, trying to work out how he could prove his mother wrong. Then he
remembered the brooch she only wore at Rosh Hashanah. He began counting on his
fingers, and calculated that he would have to wait another six weeks before he
could carry out the plan already forming in his mind.
     
     
    Lubji lay awake
for most of the night before Rosh Hashanah. Once his mother had dressed the
following morning, his eyes rarely left her-or, to be more accurate, the brooch
she wore. After the service she was surprised that when they left the synagogue
he clung to her hand on the way back home, something she couldn’t recall him
doing since his third birthday. Once they were inside their little cottage,
Lubji sat cross-legged in the corner of the fireplace and watched his mother
unclip the tiny piece of jewelry from her dress. For a moment Zelta stared at
the heirloom, before kneeling and removing the loose plank from the floor
beside the mattress, and putting the brooch carefully in the old cardboard box
before replacing the plank.
    Lubji remained
so still as he watched her that his mother became worried, and asked him if he
wasn’t feeling well.
    “I’m