Raisins and Almonds

Finally she groped for a handkerchief and wiped her eyes.

'Ai, what a pickle I've been in,' she confessed. 'Ever since Simon told us about you. Such a beautiful lady— he's been singing your praises for days, and then Bennie employed you to get the excellent Miss Lee out of jail, so you would be close to my son and you could not fail to notice his ... his ...'

'Infatuation,' Phryne completed the sentence. 'Don't worry. I can manage him. He is not,' she added, her hand on the door, 'the first young man in that condition that I have seen.'

'No, he wouldn't be,' agreed Mrs Abrahams. 'You must call me Julia. Come and look at the Renoir, now, and let's not make liars of ourselves. It's a pretty thing, isn't it? I was so angry with Bennie when he bought it, it took all our savings. But he told me he'd buy me a fur coat when he sold it, and he made our fortune just after that with the Michelangelo red-chalk Madonna, so I got my fur coat and kept the girl and the cat as well.'

'The Michelangelo? Oh, please do call me Phryne, Julia. I have a feeling that I heard about it. I was in Paris, just after the war.'

'You were? It was the coup of my Bennie's career as a dealer. After that he packed up and moved here, because one cannot count on two miracles in a lifetime. There we were, Bennie and me, I had married against my father's wishes, he did not like Ben because he was so poor and he thought I was wasting my expensive education, but we were in love, and we sold pictures and objets d'art. Ben went to all the auctions of deceased estates, and in one Italian sale, an old man who died without heirs, he bought a big trunk of drawings and etchings for a few francs because he thought it might contain some of the Hokusai screen pictures popular in the nineties—that's what he could see at the top. They were an inspiration to the Impressionists, you know, and I used to remount them as pictures and we could always sell them. It was difficult, because they were printed on very cheap paper. We hauled the trunk home to our atelier, which was freezing, it was the middle of winter, so cold that ice was forming on the inside of our windows, and we upturned it so that all the prints and scrolls fell out onto the oilcloth. And Bennie was unrolling them and sorting them while I was making coffee, and I heard him say a very rude word.'

'And she turned and saw me unrolling a full length red chalk sketch of the Madonna, a study for a sculpture, perhaps. On vellum so old that it cracked,' said Mr Abrahams' rich voice from the door. And I said 'Look, Julia,' and she looked, and there were the initials in the corner, clear as the day Michelangelo drew them, and she sat back on her heels and said, 'First, some coffee, and then we rejoice that God has not forgotten us.' But I was so nervous that when the coffee came I spilled it, though not on the Michelangelo drawing. Come, beautiful ladies, if you have finished with the Renoir we can sit down, hmm?' He led the way into the library and they sat down again. Julia sipped her sherry, smiling, and her male relatives exhaled a breath of not-very-well-concealed relief.

'Then what happened?' asked Phryne, agog.

'Oh, then we carried it together—such a journey, we were terrified that something would happen to tear the miracle from us—into the lie de Cite to the Sotheby's man, and the relief when we laid it on his table and Bennie gave him the receipts for the provenance, they had to check of course that the dead count's family had such a thing in their possession, but it was clear title, inventory entries right back to the day they bought it from Michelangelo's estate. The dead man had no heirs, so we weren't taking anything away from anyone, such a great thing the Lord did for us. And we didn't have any money for a celebration so we had to walk back in the snow, you remember?' she asked fondly, and Benjamin Abrahams chuckled.

'I could smell trouble in France—there were synagogues desecrated and much anti-Semitic dreck in the newspapers. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Jehl Even when everyone knows that it is a Russian forgery, they were reprinting it. So when the chalk drawing was sold, we came out here to join my brother Chaim, he was not doing well in business and wanted a position, and he's family, of course, and a great help Chaim is, my right-hand man, eh Chaim?'

'A mitzvah,' said Chaim. A blessing.'

'No, no, Chaim, don't say that. You're too modest. I couldn't have managed without you,' said his brother.

Chaim shook his head, smiled, and took some more sherry. It was evidently an old argument. Mr Abrahams continued, 'So I came here and bought a house and a little property, we are very lucky. And you, Miss Fisher?'

'Phryne, please. I was born here and I was very poor until a lot of young men were killed in the Great War, and then I was suddenly rich and hauled off to England. After I left school there wasn't anything for me to do but Good Works or flower arranging, so I ran away to Paris, and then I came here because a man hired me to find out if his daughter was being poisoned by her husband. I like it here. I bought a house in St Kilda, I have a maid and a staff and two adopted daughters, a cat called Ember and just yesterday my household was increased by a new puppy. I've been very lucky, too,' said Phryne, who was always willing to count her blessings.

Mrs Abrahams beamed upon Phryne. This wealthy young woman was content in her independence and would not give it up to snare a rich boy, even one so beautiful and attractive as her son Simon.

'Tell me, do all the Jews in Melbourne speak with one voice about policy?' asked Phryne. 'There seem to be a number of views on immigration. And Palestine.'

'No, no, one voice? Ten thousand voices. There is a divide in the Jewish community,' responded Mr Abrahams. 'Those across the river, the 'gentlemen of the Mosaic persuasion' as they call themselves, Carlton thinks that they are compromising their Jewishness away, so that they forget that they are Jews, marry Christians, and cease to have an identity. People who do well move from Carlton now to East Kew, staying on this side of the city. The Jews who have been here longest live in Caulfield and Camberwell. They think that Carlton is running the risk of pogroms because they are so different, speaking Yiddish in the street, even wearing sidelocks and gabardine like the Hasidim in St Kilda. Carlton thinks that Caulfield has no guts and that they are all imitation Christians; Caulfield thinks that Carlton is obstinately different and foreign and, well, Jewish, and is going to get us all killed.'

'Who is right?' asked Phryne, allowing the butler to seat her at a snowily draped dinner table.

'Both, of course,' said Benjamin Abrahams. 'There is something to be said for keeping a low profile and possibly even for restricting immigration. It has worked in some places.'

'But not forever,' said Simon, alert, from next to Phryne.

'No, nothing works forever,' agreed Mr Abrahams.

'The only solution is Palestine,' said Simon.

'No, no, no,' said his father. 'What is there of the Holy Land now but mud and swamps and deserts and Turks? And Arabs? It is not ours any more. We were dispersed. We are exiles.'

'Then it is time we went home,' said Simon. 'Two thousand years wandering, it is enough. Already we have bought land there. Now that Zionism is established and we have a clear goal, we must go forward, purchase the land from the Arabs, and build a Promised Land again.'

'Palestine does not flow with milk and honey any more,' argued his father. 'It flows with dirty water and diseases. It is a dead land, and dead land cannot be resurrected. Besides, are we farmers? Can I milk a cow, turn a harrow, reap corn?'

'When they let us be farmers, we were,' protested Simon. 'There is the fruit-growing colony at Shepparton. And the settlers at Berwick have even their own Torah.'

'Enough,' scolded Mrs Abrahams. 'We invite an accomplished lady to dinner and what do we give her? Arguments about Zionism. She does not wish to hear them. Neither do I. We talk of other things,' she declared, and the conversation, dragged by the neck, was diverted into a discussion of art which lasted through three courses.

The food was delicious if, as the driver said, foreign. The entree was extremely good chicken bouillon, clear and salty. The roast was a conventional baron of beef, surrounded with crisp vegetables including roasted pumpkin and rich, garlicky wine sauce. Dessert was a collation of sliced exotic fruit: pineapple, mango, banana, pawpaw. Phryne was looking about for cream when she remembered a laborious chapter in Mr Goldman's book on the concept of kosher and the separation of milk dishes and flesh dishes, and accepted black coffee without a flicker.

The butler set an ashtray in front of Miss Fisher and she lit a gasper, complimenting her hostess on an excellent dinner. She drew in the smoke with pleasure. A really good dinner always made Phryne feel virtuous and benevolent, prone to love the whole human race.

The effect, regrettably, wore off fairly quickly.

Mr Abrahams lit a cigar, leaned back, and asked, 'And what has happened with the unfortunate Miss