Kerry Greenwood - Raisins and Almonds

'Simon, I'm sorry—can you eat with me?'

'Yes, of course,' he said, 'unless you were responsible for dosing my co-religionist with rat poison,' he added, taking a roll and breaking it. 'In fact, even if you were I would presume that you haven't a reason for killing me, eh?'

'Aren't you supposed to only eat kosher food?'

'You've been researching us,' he said slowly. 'Yes, my mother keeps a kosher house. No, I see no reason why your coffee, your cherry jam and your bread should not be perfectly all right. I can't eat dairy food at the same time as meat, that's all, and I'm destined never to taste moules mariniere or bacon, but that's no great loss. And we keep the Sabbath, so we don't do anything but rest on Saturday, which is something of an impediment in a world which doesn't do anything on Sunday ... including get up early, I had forgotten. But my father taught me never to be negligent to beautiful ladies, so I came as soon as I decently could to apologize for not returning your call yesterday.'

He gave her a lopsided smile which was very hard to resist and Phryne's mood was already improving under the onslaught of real coffee, hyacinths and charm.

'I had a disturbed night, with all that wind, and the puppy which the girls have wished on me started howling. I shall go back to sleep presently, but for the moment I am pleased to see you,' said Phryne, sipping the black caffeine-rich brew and surveying the young man.

He was very decorative. His hair was curly, and she wondered idly what it might feel like under her hand. His bright brown eyes were as alert as a fox's; indeed there was something foxy about him, except that he had the unshakeable confidence of being his mother's favourite or only child. His close-shaven jaw was slightly shadowed, his tie pin was a little too emphatic, his suit a little too formal for so early in the morning, and his buttonhole of a pink rose quite outrageous according to the canons of public-school taste. Phryne was very pleased with her acquisition.

'Delighted,' he murmured, looking into her eyes. She bit into a crust and the young man dragged his gaze away and caught sight of her bedtime reading. He shuffled quickly through the books.

'Ah, yes. Mr Goldman.'

'Have you read it?' asked Phryne, spreading cherry jam on her roll.

'\es, certainly. "The Jewish problem is not a Jewish problem, but a gentile problem, and only the gentiles can solve it." The trouble with being a Jew—apart from being Chosen and presumably God knew what he was doing when he Chose us—is that we have no home. There really is no place where the Jews have not lived for years and felt safe which has not turned against them. We exist everywhere on sufferance—here, for example.'

'Here?' Phryne sat up a little. 'There have been no pogroms here.'

'No, but immigration is restricted. If there was an emergency somewhere—Russia, for example—and the Jews had to flee, as they fled in 1492 from Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain, where would they go? Our own assimilationists would keep the Russians out, saying that there was no room in this country for the sweepings of the Soviet ghettos as they said about the immigrants fleeing the Czarist May laws in 1881. The Jews who have been here for a couple of generations—and Australia has only been settled for a few generations, you know—would keep the others away because they are afraid of turning even this laconic place against us. They are afraid of there being too many Jews attracting too much attention and envy. We have not forgotten Ikey Mo in the Bulletin in the nineties, you know'

'The Bulletin in the nineties hated everyone,' objected Phryne. 'Along with Ikey Mo there was Johnnie Chinaman and Jacky-Jacky the aborigine and Paddy the drunken Irishman and they weren't keen on women, either, looking on my own sex, as I understand, as the root of all evil. But what's the solution? If your own people want to restrict immigration, what is to be done?'

'A homeland,' said Simon, and his face shone with a pure light of dedication.

'Where?' asked Phryne, putting the tray on her bedside table.

'Palestine ...'

He looked so beautiful, his long lashes lowered over the bright eyes, that Phryne reached out and caressed the curly hair and the smooth cheek. Simon Abrahams nestled into the touch and kissed her palm, and Phryne gasped. Her hand dropped to the broadcloth lap, and Simon made the same noise. She undid his tie, shucked his coat, took the studs from his sleeves. 'Come and lie down with me,' she whispered.

He took the rose from his coat and shed the petals over Phryne. They slid down her shiny black hair and were scattered over her pillow and her breast.

From then on, it was simple. She lay and watched him undress, shedding broadcloth and linen, young enough to pull impatiently at the shirt where the buttons would not release their grip. The slim body emerged like a flower from a calyx: long legs, slim hands and feet, a wiry body used to some hard labour. He was entirely naked when he slid down alongside Phryne in her silken bed, and the cream nightdress was already cast aside.

Cool morning light made an icon, strangely religious, of the young man with the Middle Eastern face. Phryne felt him shiver as their bodies touched at a thousand points, and she ran both hands down his smooth back, her fingers curling over the muscular buttocks and sliding inward to cup the denuded genitalia in a gratifying state of excitement.

Jews, Phryne had been told, did not enjoy sex as much as gentiles because of circumcision. As she sank into a bath of sensuality, she was pleased to have this statement proved as idiotic as she had first thought it.

His fingers trapped her nipples and she gasped aloud, closing her eyes as the clever hands moved down her body and caressed in a circular, fiery motion, so delicate and so skilled that she did not immediately feel the change as the fingers were withdrawn and both bodies closed, joined, with a snap like a tensile steel spring.

Simon Abrahams' knowledge of women had been almost entirely theoretical. He had been sorely tempted by the light ladies who walked St Kilda Road and by the flaunting damsels of the Eastern Market, who haunted the street-level shops when all the rest of the city was respectably dark, looking for a friend to take home with them before the market shut at nine o'clock. He was conscious of his duty to marry a suitable young woman and have children in due course, and meant to do so. But he had never expected to be seduced by a woman so beautiful, so strong, so sure of her own desires. She was as pale as bone china and as strong as he was; he felt lithe muscle under the smooth skin as she slid from under him and they rolled, so that he was lying flat on his back and the woman was riding him, her breasts in his hands, her mouth on his. She moved like a dancer, like a mating animal, like something out of a hermit's fever-dream. She lay under him with her legs wrapped round his waist. Surprise had delayed his climax; now it overwhelmed him. Her red mouth smothered his cry and matched it. He embraced Phryne as she collapsed onto his chest and panted for breath.

He felt tears trickle down his cheeks and tasted salt on his mouth. He was crying.

Phryne untangled their limbs and lay down beside him, and he put his head on her breast. She felt him sob and said gently, 'Simon?'

'Oh, Phryne, oh, beautiful lady,' he whispered. 'I never ... I never thought that the love of woman would be so ... so ...'

'Overwhelming?' She was still breathless, and her body burned under his hands. Her voice, however, was light and almost careless.

'Well, gentle lady, you wanted me,' he said, hurt. 'Was that all you desired, Phryne?'

'No, I desire a great deal more than that,' she returned. 'I am not intending to cast you from my door now that you have given me your all, Simon dear, don't be melodramatic. You're very beautiful,' she kissed him once. 'And you're very skilled,' she kissed him twice. 'And as you see,' she kissed him a third time, 'you have more to offer me.'