When I Lived in Modern Times Read Online Free PDF Page A

age of forty-one. After some weeks they drove her in an ambulance to a nursing home on the south coast where she sat staring at the sea. Nor did my own face or that of Uncle Joe cause the corner of her mouth to move or the tip of a finger to lift. But still, to my surprise he paid for everything. She had the best from him, though he owed her nothing in law. What is that secret intimacy between two people that no one who is not a part of it can ever fathom?
    I felt numb with the pain of her abrupt removal from my life. Everything we could have said to each other it was too late to say. Iwanted her forgiveness for the times when I came in late and did not go to her room to kiss her; or when I complained and grumbled about having to work at the salon; or when I resented that I had not been born into more regular circumstances; or when I was ashamed that the girls at school called me the hairdresser’s daughter.
    I went to visit every Sunday. She looked at me, uncomprehendingly. Her hair was turning gray and it was fine, and only combed, not permed, or set, or styled. I held her hand and watched our shadows on the lawn. My mother had turned her face against ugliness, she had fled from the slums to a life that was pretty. She had found a protector. But even he could not save her from reality. It was obvious to me that life was not fair and made victims of people who should never have been oppressed in the spirit and the body, and that the only way to live was to summon one’s strength to fight back against whoever it was who was trying to dominate you, not retreat into a world of make-believe.
    I left her with a charcoal drawing I had made of the two of us together, in our old home, the flat in Soho. I put it on her lap but she didn’t look at it. I walked away and then turned and waved. Her head was lolling. She seemed to have fallen asleep.
    “She’s exhausted after the excitement of your visit,” a nurse said.
    By the winter she was a wisp of ectoplasm swirling around in a chair. I kissed her papery skin and held her hand. She smelled of old food and urine. On Christmas Eve she died. Uncle Joe was away. He had taken the first family to a Jewish hotel in Bournemouth. I had to get the synagogue to find the ten Jewish men we needed for the
minyan
without which the interment could not proceed. Ten strangers. They stood there respectfully, like so many suitors. She went into the ground. They filed past and wished me long life. But what kind of a life was it to be?
    “Now what?” said Uncle Joe. “You want me to find you another place in an office?”
    “I’d like to go to art school.”
    “How can you make a living out of art? Where’s the money in it?”
    “I don’t care about money.”
    He choked on his cigar. I thought the smoke would come out of his ears.
    “Listen, Evelyn, who I have known since you were a tiny baby in your mother’s arms, may her good soul rest in peace. No one can live for five minutes without money. They think they can but then they find out different. Have you got a sweetheart yet?”
    “No. No sweetheart.”
    “You’re fancy-free?”
    “Yes.”
    “No ties?”
    “No.”
    “Then why don’t you go to Palestine?”
    “I don’t know, I never thought about it.”
    “How does the idea strike you?”
    Palestine. I had never been further than Sussex.
    He gave me books to read and pamphlets.
    A week later he came to the flat.
    “You read the books?”
    “Yes, I’ve read them. All. Every word.”
    “What do you think?”
    “Palestine belongs to us,” I cried. “What do we have to do with this place, England? It’s nothing. Only the birth of our own country can avenge the death of the six million.
That’s
the resurrection.”
    “Excellent. I knew you’d see it in the right way. Now we have to find a way to get you in, but trust me, I have some connections.”
    We went together to the Jewish Agency. They were incredulous. What could I offer? they demanded. Nothing, it turned out.