Shattered Crystals - Mia Amalia Kanner (that summer book TXT) 📗

Much of his trade was conducted on installment credit. He gave credit not only for furniture but also for cloth and kitchen utensils. He would call on his customers once or twice a month to collect small installments of the money. Often during the collection calls, he would sell a small item from his stock; or a farmer’s wife might place a new order with him. Because he did not press his customers when they were short, they tried to make payments on schedule.

All this I learned later. What I knew when I was young was that my father was away all week long, leaving home early Sunday morning, not returning until Friday afternoon. He would disappear almost as soon as he returned from his wanderings to bathe and shave. We waited for him in the dining room until he reappeared in his white shirt, black tie, and dark suit. Mama lit two white candles set in the silver candelabra, covered her face with her hands, bentched licht, and it was Shabbos. Then my father would daven, and return to the table to make Kiddush, and soon it was time for Mama’s wonderful chicken soup with noodles and kneidlach.

I loved my father deeply. It was always a special time when he was around. My father was with us only on Shabbos and Yomim Tovim, so those days became doubly special for me.

Because Papa was away so much of the time, my mother was the dominant influence in my life. Mama was fair, heavyset and short; she was also strong-willed, energetic, ambitious and intelligent. She was fluent in Yiddish, Polish, German, and could read Russian and French. She read widely in these languages, burning her candle deep into the night as the rest of us slept soundly.

Since I was her first child, and her only one for some time, Mama had great hopes for me. I was to become a doctor, like many of her male cousins. She did not consider it a hindrance that I was a girl and saw no reason for me not to succeed. There was no Jewish school for girls, so I learned about yiddishkeit and how to read and write Hebrew at our little shul. For the study of German, mathematics, history, and science, Mama enrolled me in a state school. I was the only Jewish girl there, and I experienced anti-Semitism for the first time. The children talked behind my back and excluded me from their circles.

My sister Hannah, who was four years younger than I, was more fortunate. Mama also had ambitions for her; she would train as a nurse. But by the time Hannah was ready to start school, Rabbi Ephraim Carlebach had established a school where Jewish children took Jewish and secular courses. Hannah was thus spared the taunts and cruelties I suffered.

We lived on the third floor in a six-room, corner apartment on the Nordstrasse, one of the nicer streets in Leipzig’s Jewish section. Apartment houses lined the street, many of which had retail stores on the ground floor, all of them owned by Jews.

The extra bedroom in our apartment was occupied as often as not. It was rare that we did not have people staying with us. If all the beds were filled, there was always the living room sofa. Mama’s first and second cousins would come either on holidays or to stay for weeks while on a project of study. Cousins were treated as favorite members of the family. Mama was orphaned when she was a child and was taken in, looked after and loved by her five aunts, and raised along with a large brood of cousins. As a married woman, Mama welcomed her cousins into her own home; this was not a gesture of obligatory reciprocation, but a free act of love, performed with pleasure. She knew no other way.

Sometimes friends of friends or children of friends boarded with us. All of them were young men who needed a place to stay during a course of study or a holiday in Leipzig. Everyone was made welcome. Hospitality was a part of daily life.

Mama planned and cooked all the meals in our large kitchen. When I came home from school in time and had no homework, I might help by mixing cake batter. But Mama alone mixed and shaped kneidlach. The measurement of eggs, water, matzah meal, seasoning, and the handling of the mixture required such precision that she trusted no one with that particular task.

Sometimes Mama let me do some light housework, but cleaning ladies came regularly to help her prepare meals and clean the house. On one occasion, however, I had a taste of heavy labor. It was Friday, the day of the week when I arrived home from school early. I ran into the kitchen to see what Mama was preparing for our Shabbos meal, and she said, “Later, later. First you are to scrub the kitchen floor.”

I protested vehemently. “But Mama, it’s a dirty, messy job.”

“Yes, that’s true,” she agreed.

“Why can’t the cleaning woman do it?” I asked.

“I sent her home early today,” Mama said. “Some day, you will marry and be on your own; you must learn how to run a home. You can’t ask someone to do a chore and know it has been done well unless you know what it’s like to do that job for yourself. Only then can you have good servants. Now, you know where the soap is. Hot water works best. I think you must heat some.”

I scrubbed the kitchen floor that Friday, and rose with sore knees, aching shoulders, and red, rough hands. I never forgot the lesson Mama taught me. I must understand and respect those who might work for me.

Around that time, Mama entered into a business partnership with Meyer Weinrauch. Meyer’s line of business was shoes, and he was opening a new store. While Meyer obtained merchandise from various wholesalers, Mama was to be in charge of the store.

The store was one the Eisenbadstrasse, outside the main Jewish district. Mama ran the business as smoothly and efficiently as she did her home. None of my friends had mothers who worked, but I accepted that my mother was different. I always believed Mama was a genius and could do whatever she set her mind to.

My friends were Jewish children who lived in our building and girls from clubs to which I belonged. I joined youth groups and we met on Shabbos afternoons to sing Hebrew songs and discuss religion and debate Jewish concerns. On Sundays, we went on outings and talked about living in Eretz Yisrael.

I was already fifteen years old, when my sister Edith was born in 1920. Everything changed then. Edith could not have been more than a few weeks old when Mama announced she was going to stay home to take care of the new baby.

“You are the oldest,” she told me late one Sunday afternoon. “You must leave school and take my place in the store. Now, you will learn the stock very quickly. I have no doubt that you can operate the register. You will take care of the money, supervise the two sales clerks, and keep an eye on the stock. You’ll also have to inform Meyer if we run low before he expects it.”

I was stunned, but did not dispute Mama’s decision. She was lying in bed, holding the sleeping baby in her arms. I had learned to recognize when Mama had made up her mind. Clearly, Mama would stand firm in her resolution on the future. That future included her business. I don’t believe she ever considered giving up the store. She had been a businesswoman, and I would follow her. She would have one, not two, daughters with a medical career. There was still Hannah to enter the field of medicine. She would become a nurse as Mama had planned.

My sister, Edith, developed into the most beautiful little girl any of us knew. Tragically, she was mentally slow. I don’t know if that affected Mama’s decision not to hire a nursemaid for Edith. Looking back, I think Mama knew from the beginning that something was wrong. The birth had taken place at home, and it was quick. The story told was that the baby was delivered unexpectedly fast and hit her head against the headboard of the bed.

When I was seventeen, Mama began looking for a husband for me, but I had no interest in marriage. I could not imagine myself living with any of the candidates based on what I heard or saw of them. Some of Mama’s stubbornness had rubbed off on me. I insisted I was content with my life. During the day I was busy in the store; evenings and Sundays, my friends and I would attend lectures and classical music concerts. In good weather, we would go on outings in the country, always looking forward to what life would bring in the future.

I don’t know how many young men Mama showed me or how many times I disappointed her in the next six years. Hannah was well along in her nursing studies and already committed to marry Herman Felber, a childhood friend who lived in our building on Nordstrasse. Just when Mama’s friends said I was on the way to becoming an old maid, she came up with another suitor.

On a fine summer Sunday in 1928, Salomon Kanner, a young man from another city, called at Nordstrasse. He suggested that we go for a coffee and Viennese pastry in a cafe in one of our parks. We rode the trolley to the cafe with Mama as chaperon. Sal told us about his life in Halle an der Saale, a town an hour’s ride from Leipzig. He had four sisters and one brother, all of whom were married. The youngest of six children, Sal lived with his widowed father and owned a clothing and dry goods store.

After Sal escorted us home and left for the train station, Mama asked me what I thought of him. This time I did not reply that I wished she and her friends would stop their attempts at matchmaking. Before I knew it I was engaged and the wedding date was set four months after our first meeting. Relatives and friends came to Leipzig from Vienna, Berlin, Halle and Belgium. With two hundred witnesses, the chuppah took place on January 20, 1929. I did not think I could be any happier.