Трепет. Сергей Малицкий

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      I can still hear Uncle Harry's measured phrases more than seventy years later. Being a Jew was not going to be easy, he seemed to be telling me in his kindly avuncular way. Use your mind, not your fists; if the worst comes . . . run. If you get caught, roll yourself up into a tight little ball like the echidna. He showed it to me on one of our few city outings when he took me to the Natural History Museum in College Street. Another was when I accompanied him to the Great Synagogue. My father bought me a white shirt, a jumper with the maker's label snipped off and likewise a pair of navy serge pants - all metsiehs from Morry's Paddy's Market stall.

      What a day that was! Not a whole day, really - it began at 9 o'clock with a ride on the tram sitting next to MY UNCLE who wore his pin-stripe suit, his bowler hat and held a silver- mounted walking stick. I carried his rubyred velvet bag with his tallit and prayer book. It was embroidered with Hebrew lettering in gold thread and seemed to me rich enough to contain the crown jewels. We alighted at the corner of College Street and walked across Hyde Park where the destitute were just rousing themselves from their newspaper-covered sleep. Once inside the synagogue, Uncle Harry nodded greetings with some and with others exchanged Gut Shabbes as we proceeded down the aisle to his seat. There, he wrapped himself in his prayer shawl, opened his prayer book and was soon oblivious to my company.

      Which was just fine. First the vaulted ceiling transfixed me with its myriad painted stars. I stood up and sat down as the service required me to, but otherwise took no part in it. At the reading table on its raised dais before the richly curtained ark, the two rabbis bent over their praying until the high point, which from a seven-year-old's perspective was when the curtains parted and the scrolls of the Torah were taken out. Oh, the drama! Then began a parade of the scrolls led by the rabbis holding the Torahs and followed with aldermanic dignity by the president and treasurer, replete with top hats and striped pants. The ceremonial party walked a path which took them through the body of the synagogue, and the male congregants moved to the ends of their pews to greet the scrolls of the Law. Uncle Harry brushed the scrolls with the corner of his tallit then pressed it to his lips. I had never seen theatre or, for that matter, any staged entertainment, but I could not imagine that anything could be as wonderful as this procession which reached its apogee later when an open scroll was held high above the rabbi's head for all to see the sacred text. And to be sure, for me, it had absolutely nothing to do with religion.

      Uncle Harry and I were silent on the tram ride home. He kept his hand inside his suit coat; he was gently massaging his heart, his head bent low as though he was listening for its tick. He walked at an undertaker's pace with me skipping ahead and doubling back to him. There were many questions milling about in my head but I stored them up. Uncle Harry climbed the few short steps to the flat and pushed open the unlatched door.

      My father's hail-fellow-well-met voice boomed out from the dark interior. 'Stone the crows, Harry, I was about to send out a search party for you.' He tousled my hair, an unfamiliar gesture. 'Took the young'un for company, did you? Well, whaddya say to y' dad, son? Have a good time? Didja say a prayer for me, son?' He hooked his fingers in his waistcoat and gave a prodigious wink. 'Your Aunty Cissy's got something to tell you, haven't you, Ciss.' Harry moved to stand alongside his wife, who stretched her neck in the brace.

      'Your father is getting married ' again.' She ground out the last word with undisguised contempt.

      Well, whatever these adults expected of me, it did not eventuate. I was still enveloped in the wonders of this morning's Great Synagogue spectacular. The stars of the ceiling still danced before me, the scroll with its elegant Hebrew on parchment, whirled above my head. I could still feel the erotic smoothness of the wooden knobs at the ends of the pews; my palms tingled and my scrotum tightened at the recall.

      My father shook me roughly. 'I'm takin' you with me, son, just as soon as I get things fixed up.'

      The metamorphosis from Jewish boy to Jewboy was about to take place.

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