WE KNEW, BUT WE DIDN'T KNOW

 

 

CHAPTER TEN—A KEY AND A CLOWDER 

It was a surprisingly mild evening. I was tired, as usual, but I wasn’t hungry. On impulse, I decided to visit the Golds. Their shop would be closed, but I knew they lived in the same building, and maybe they would be happy to see me. When I reached Crinoline Lane, I felt cheered. The street lights here were a rosy amber making passersby look soft and lovely. Some of the stores were still open, but Goldfinger’s was dark and the door was locked. I rang the bell once, twice and in a few moments, Mr. Gold opened the door. He looked worried, but he recognized me almost immediately. “Come in, child. It’s such a pleasure to see you. Hannah and I were about to sit down to dinner. You must join us. I insist!”

I followed him beyond the brocade curtain and up a long, steep flight of wooden stairs. There was an entryway into a golden-brown room. Mr. Gold was quite out of breath when he turned to face me. “Kindly sit down wherever you please. Hannah should be here in a moment.” The walls of this room were painted antique gold and the floor was a scarred dark oak. There were several overstuffed dark velvet armchairs arranged on the outskirts, and a massive dining room table was the centre of attention. It was the colour of polished honey. The aromas were golden. The room was very, very warm, hot actually, and I shrugged off my coat, which looked so shabby in this homey yet radiant setting.

Before I could be seated, Mrs. Gold entered the room with a large silver-coloured tray. On it were two bowls, tureens really, of soup and a basket filled with fragrant rolls. “Ah, company. Excellent. I’ll bring out another bowl of chicken soup.”

“Oh, please don’t go to the trouble, Mrs. Gold. We’re — I’m not allowed to eat meat.”

“And who’s to know if you do?” Mrs. Gold challenged pertly. “I’ll be right back. Franz, show our young guest to the table.”

Mr. Gold fetched a side chair and I approached the table. Silverware was in place on beautifully folded cloth serviettes. The soup smelled exquisite. Mrs. Gold returned with a third bowl. It wasn’t white like the other two, rather a rich cream colour. The liquid was a kind of pale gold, and there were sizable pieces of carrots, celery, potatoes and white chicken meat. “Add rice if you like. I always serve it on the side.”

I had no qualms about tasting the chicken. After all, it was merely one component of the soup. I forewent the rice, but took a large bite out of the soft and still hot dinner roll. Then I brought the soup spoon to my lips and quietly slurped the soup in. The broth, vegetables and chicken tasted delicious and herbal. I had no idea that food could be so complex — so subtle. I felt as though I were the guest in someone else’s beautiful dream.

But then Franz — Mr. Gold — gave a deep, sharp sigh and covered his forehead with his hands. “There is no immunity, dear God. Who would believe it? After so much suffering, so much loss, there is nevertheless no immunity.”

“Franz dear,” his sister chided. “Please, not now. We have a young guest with problems of her own. Let us enjoy this moment, a warm home, filling food and a roof over our heads.”

“But they’re going to take the shop and the flat away from us, Hannah! You haven’t been listening to Lise and Henry. They have offered us a solution, but you refuse to listen!”

“I will listen, Franz. I promise, but now is not the time.” Mrs. Gold turned to me, “You like the soup, dear?”

“It’s wonderful, thank you. I can honestly say it’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever tasted.”

“It’s also healthy. I’ve always found that a well-made chicken soup tastes like love. And so, tell us about your friend. How is she? Did she like the garnet ring?”

Mr. Gold removed his hands from his forehead and the worried expression on his face had changed to frank curiosity.

“She loved it! She loves it. That’s the reason I came by, to tell you that, and to thank you again for your generosity.” At my own mention of generosity, I felt shame that I had brought nothing to the Golds as a token of my fond appreciation. But I realised that could wait. After all, there was no expiry date on reciprocity.

Both Golds smiled fully. Hannah then stood up with a barely stifled groan and announced, “And now I bring in the main course.”

I stood up and stacked the bowls. “Please let me, Mrs. Gold. And I can help you in the kitchen as well.”

I followed Mrs. Gold into an alarmingly cluttered kitchen. Every surface was covered with plates, pots, pans, utensils, newspaper clipping, fabric remnants, and tin boxes of all shapes and sizes. It was beautiful, nonetheless, at least to my eyes. There was one long, narrow stained-glass window near the chubby refrigerator. There were jewel tulips with peridot-green stems and cherry-pink petals. The background was a pale aquamarine. Of course, at the time, I couldn’t name the jewel tones, but the Golds have since taught me the names of many semi-precious gemstones.

I noticed that Mrs. Gold’s hands were shaking, not violently but persistently. She pointed to a platter containing chunks of dark meat and an assortment of root vegetables. “Be a doll, and take the stew to the dining room. Oh, wait, before you go. Please tell me what you’d care to drink. We have water, apple juice, ginger ale or red wine. The wine is from a homemade recipe which we passed on to Lise and Henry. You know who they are. They came into the shop while you were selecting a ring for your friend. They are brother and sister like us, like Franz and me, I mean. Their parents saved our lives in Germany, but that was long ago. They kept us in hiding for over five years. But that is a story for another day. It’s funny, you know what it said about history, that it repeats itself. It doesn’t do that, not really, but it does recycle elements of itself. So it’s not quite repetition, but it can masquerade as such if one is looking for easy answers.”

 

I wasn’t following Mrs. Gold’s train of thought, but I realised that her back story had something to do with the documentary Miss Veronique had insisted we watch all those years ago, the ghetto documentary. Clones had no religious affiliations, and truth be told, we never thought about God. God was not for us in the same way that families were not for us. We knew there were Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and more and that there were sub-categories of these religions, but all of these distinctions were of no interest to us. But I had understood when Miss Veronique spoke about the documentary that the Jews had been a viciously persecuted people. Was Miss Veronique trying to demonstrate that the Jews of Nazi occupied Europe and later day clones had something in common?

“I’d love a glass of red wine, Mrs. Gold. It will be a first for me. We can access a kind of low percentage alcoholic wine, but it doesn’t taste good. It has a strongly chemical odour, and it’s very costly.”

I carried the platter into the dining room and Mrs. Gold followed with a garnet-coloured decanter. “Hans, you can also be useful. The glasses and plates, please.”

Hans had deep pouches under his bright blue eyes, but I guessed that he was the older of the siblings. His skin was less loose and he walked with much less difficulty. Of course, his sister was heavyset, whereas he was wiry. I caught myself wondering what they had looked like when they were my age.

I began feasting on the fragrant stew. The pieces of meat were buttery soft and I couldn’t discern a decidedly meaty flavour; it was simply delicious. I had assumed that meat would taste exactly the way it smelled; it did and it didn’t. There was a fair bit of meat juice on my plate and I sopped it up with a second dinner roll. The wine was a little shocking. It was like intricately perfumed vinegar, but I enjoyed the sensation of its coursing down my throat.

“It is very agreeable to have your company,” Mr. Gold said after a few minutes of silence. “My sister and I have been very concerned about a letter we received from the government. We’d heard rumours of these letters, but we were alarmed to receive one. It was about our property, that we had to sell it by the end of next year due to our advanced ages and the fact that we had no children to inherit it.”

I was jolted out of my food and wine trance. The warmth of the room and the enticing flavours had lulled me into a state of sleepy comfort, but now I was wide awake, tense and without appetite. “Go on,” I managed to croak. But Mr. Gold had begun to weep, so his sister took over. “We’d heard about an amendment that would be taking effect concerning persons over the age of 70, but we’d been hearing about it for years and we hadn’t received any calls or enquiries or notifications, so we figured that it applied only to the elderly who were receiving social assistance. But the net widened without our understanding anything about this law, or collection of laws. One could apply for a copy, but the application was costly, and we were assured by our solicitor that we had nothing to worry about.”

It was too much for me to assimilate. It made no sense. “But where are you to live if they take away your home?” I asked.

Hannah continued, “That remains unclear. Apparently there are various options, but the appraisal on our business, building and land is ridiculously low. Our solicitor says that can be contested, but only once the transaction is completed. If we win in court, we can only get a revised evaluation after the sale. It is all very confusing, even Mr. Barret says so, and he has advised us to go a different route.”

“Is there anything, anything at all I can do to help?” As a person, I was worthless, but it occurred to me that I could possibly be of assistance as a messenger.

“Thank you for your kind offer, dear. It is we who would like to help you, but now that may have become very complicated. We’ll see.” Mr. Gold had regained an ounce or two of composure.

“Such a thing happened to our parents in Germany a long time ago.” Mrs. Gold added. “When that period was finally over, our parents were dead. Most of our relatives, also dead. But it all began with unbelievable edicts. Mother and Father reasoned, ‘Now it will stop. If we accept and obey this order, that rule, those new laws, we will be all right.’ But it didn’t stop until a world war put an end to the genocide. And now it begins again.”

I stood up shakily, and began to carry plates, glasses and cutlery to the kitchen. The three of us cleared the table as though in slow motion. My feet and legs felt very heavy and I caught a whiff of my armpits. I smelled sour. I needed a bath.

I saw Mrs. Gold clutching a metal object in her right fist. I knew that she intended to give it to me. “Take this,” she forced the silver-coloured object into my hand. It was a house key without a ring or chain. Just a shiny, new key. “Use it whenever you can. Use it often. We have the beginnings of a plan, but we’re going to act very, very soon. I think we can still help you, but we have to speak with Lise and Henry first. Please come soon, tomorrow if possible or the day after.”

I hugged both of them goodbye and they asked me to let myself out and lock the door behind me. “We want to know if the copy is good, “Mr. Gold said calmly.

The key worked perfectly, which pleased me, but I was assaulted by a sharp, pungent odour of cat piss as I let myself out. The stink had not been there less than two hours earlier. I understood that this was courtesy of one or more male cats. But as I made my way through Crinoline Lane, I noticed a clowder of cats slinking about. They appeared to be strays judging from their skinny bodies and absence of collars. There were adults and kittens, gingers, calicos, grey, tiger-stripes, the whole spectrum, it seemed. Even the ones with pretty faces looked much the worse for wear. Clearly they had been living in the streets for a good while, yet why hadn’t I noticed them before? And another thing. They were all mute, no mewling or caterwauling whatsoever. “Where have they all come from?” I wondered, “and when did they arrive? Do they live around here now or are they just passing through?”