She stared at the odd little man on the doorstep. He looked like a don, with his round spectacles and his old gray suit and his bristly short hair. There had been nothing wrong with him when she opened the door, but as soon as he set eyes on her he had turned quite gray This kind of thing had happened to her once before, walking down the High Street. A delightful old gentleman had stared at her, doffed his hat, stopped her and said, "I say, I know we haven!t been introduced but. . ." This was obviously the same phenomenon, so she said, "rin not Eila. I'm Suza. "Suza!" said the stranger. 'They say I look exactly like my mother did when she was my age. You obviously knew her. Will you come in?" The man stayed where he was. He seemed to be recovering from the surprise, although he was still pale. "I'm Nat Dickstein," he said with a little smile. "How do you do," Suza said. "Won't you---~' Then she realized what he had said. It was her turn to be surprised. "Mister Dicksteiril" she said, her voice rising almost to a squeal. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. "You remembered," he said when she let go. He looked pleased and embarrassed. "Of coursel" she said. "You used to pet Hezekiah. You were the only one who could understand what he was saying." He gave that little smile again. "Hezekiah the catrd forgotten." "Well, come inl" He stepped past her into the house, and she closed the door. Taking his arm, she led him across the square hall. "This is wonderful," she said. "Come into the kitchen, rve been messing about trying to make a cake." She gave him a stool. He sat down and looked about slowly, giving little nods of recognition at the old kitchen table, the fireplace, the view through the window.
"Let's have some coffee," Suza said. "Or would you prefer tear, "Coffee, please. Thank you." "I expect you want to see Daddy. He's teaching this morning, but hell be back soon for lunch." She poured coffee beans into a hand-operated grinder. "And your motherr, "She died fourteen years ago. Cancer." Suza looked at him, expecting the automatic "I'm sorry." The words did not come, but the thought showed on his face. Somehow she Red him more for that She ground the beans. The noise filled the silence. When she had finished, Dickstein said, "Professor Ashford is still teaching ... I was just trying to work out his age." "Sixty-five," she said. "He doesn't do a lot." Sixty-five sounded ancient but Daddy didn't seem old, she thought fondly: his mind was still sharp as a knife. She wondered what Dickstein did for a living. "Didift you emigrate to Palestine?" she asked him. "Israel. I live on a kibbutz. I grow grapes and make wine." Israel. In this house it was always called Palestine. How would Daddy react to this old friend who now stood for everything Daddy stood against? She knew the answer: it would make no difference, for Daddy's politics were theoretical, not practical. She wondered why Dickstein had come. "Are you on holidayr' "Business. We now think the wine is good enough to export to Europe." "'Mat's very good. And you're selling it?" "Looking out the possibilities. Tell me about yourself. rIl bet you're not a university professor." The remark annoyed her a little, and she knew she was blushing faintly just below her ears: she did not want this man to think she was not clever enough to be a don. "What makes you say thatT' she said coolly. "You're so . . . warm." Dickstein looked away, as if he immediately regretted the choice of word. "Anyway, too young. She had misjudged him. He had not been condescending. "I have my father's ear for languages, but not his academic turn of mind, so I'm an air hostess," she said, and wondered if it were true that she did not have an academic mind, whether she really was not clever enough to be a don. She poured boiling water into a filter, and the smell of coffee filled the room. She did not know what to say next. She glanced up at Dickstein and discovered that he was openly gazing at her, deep in thought. His eyes were large and dark brown. Suddenly she felt shy-which was most unusual. She told him so, "Shy?" he said. "That's because I've been staring at you as if you were a painting, or something. I'm trying to get used to the fact that you're not Eila, you're the little girl with the old gray cat." "Hezekiah died, it must have been soon after you left." "'Ilere's a lot that's changed." "Were you great friends with my parentsr "I was one of your father's students. I admired your mother from a distance. Eila . . ." Again he looked away, as if to pretend that it was someone else speaking. "She wasn't just beautiful--she was striking." Suza looked into his face. She thought: You loved her. Tlie thought came unbidden; it was intuitive; she immediately suspected it might be wrong. However, it would explain the severity of his reaction on the doorstep when he saw her. She said, "My mother was the original hippy-did you know thatT' "I don't know what you mean." "She wanted to be free. She rebelled against the restrictions put on Arab women, even though she came from an affluent, liberal home. She married my father to get out of the Middle East. Of course she found that western society had its own ways of repressing women --- so she proceeded to break most of the rules." As she spoke Suza remembered how she had re alized, while she was becoming a woman and beginning to understand passion, that her mother was promiscuous. She had been shocked, she was sure, but somehow she could not recall the feeling. "'Mat makes her a hippy?" Dickstein said. "Hippies believe in free love." I'll see." And from his reaction to that she knew that her mother had not loved Nat Dickstein. For no reason at all this made her sad. "Tell me about your parents," she said. She was talking to him as if they were the same age.
"Only if you pour the coffee." She laughed. "I was forgetting." "My father was a cobbler," Dickstein began. "He was good at mending boots but he wasn't much of a businessman. Still, the Thirties were good years for cobblers in the East End of London. People couldn't afford new boots, so they had their old ones mended year after year. We were never rich, but we had a little more money than most of the people around us. And, of course, there was some pressure on my father from his family to expand the business, open a second shop, employ other men." Suza passed him his coffee. "Milk, sugar?" "Sugar, no milk. Thank you." "Do go on." It was a different world, one she knew nothing about: it had never occurred to her that a shoe repairer would do well in a depression. "Me leather dealers thought my father was a tartar-they could never sell him anything but the best. If there was a second-rate hide they would say, 'Don't bother . giving that to Dickstein, hell send it straight back.' So I was told, anyway." He gave that little smile again. "Is he still alive?" Suza asked. "He died before the war." "What happened?" "Well. The Thirties were the Fascist years in London. They used to hold open-air meetings every night. The speakers would tell them how Jews the world over were sucking the blood of working people. The speakers, the organizers, were respectable middle-class men, but the crowds were unemployed ruffians. After the meetings they would march through the streets, breaking windows and roughing-up pashersby. Our house was a perfect target for them. We were Jews; my father was a shopkeeper and therefore a bloodsucker; and, true to their propaganda, we were slightly better off than the people around us." He stopped, staring into space. Suza waited for him to go on. As he told this story, he seemed to 'huddle-crossing his legs tightly, wrapping his arms around his body, hunching his back. Sitting there on the kitchen stool, in his ill-fitting suit of clerical,gray, with his elbows and knees and shoulders pointing at all angles, he looked like a bundle of sticks in a bag. "We lived over the shop. Every damn night I used to lie awake, waiting for them to go past. I was blind terrified, mainly because I knew my father was so frightened. Sometimes they did nothing, just went by. Usually they shouted out slogans. Often, often they broke the windows. A couple of times they got Into the shop and smashed it up. I thought they were going to come up the stairs. I put my head under the pillow, crying, and cursed God for making me Jewish." "Didn!t the police do anything?" 'Vhat they could. If they were around they stopped it. But they had a lot to do in those days. The Communists were the only people who would help us fight back, and my father didn't want their help. All the political parties were against the Fascists, of course-but it was the Reds who gave out pickaxe handles and crowbars and built barricades. I tried to join the Party but they wouldn't have me--too young." "And your father?" "He just sort of lost heart. After the shop was wrecked the second time there was no money to fix it. It seemed be didn't have the energy to start again somewhere else. He went on the dole, and just kind of wasted. He died in 1938." "And you?" "Grew up fast Joined the army as soon as I looked old enough. Got taken prisoner early. Came to Oxford after the war, then dropped out and went to Israel." "Have you got a family out there?" "The whole kibbutz is my family but I never mar. ried." "Because of my mother?" "Perhaps. Partly. You're very direct." She felt the glow of a faint blush below her ears again: it had been a very intimate question to ask someone who was practically a stranger. Yet it had come quite naturally. She said, "rm sorry." "Don't apologize," Dickstein said. "I rarely talk like this. Actually, this whole trip is, I don't know, full of the past. There's a word for it. Redolent." "That means smelling of death." Dickstein shrugged. There was a silence. I like this man a lot, Suza thought. I like his conversation and his silences, his big eyes and his old suit and his memories. I hope he'll stay a while. She picked up the coffee cups and opened the dishwasher.