Free Raisins and Almonds by Kerry Greenwood

be a
schlimazl.
    'What's the difference between a
schlemiel
and a
schlimazl
?' asked Phryne, sitting down on a hard wooden kitchen chair and noticing that of all the clean kitchens she had been in this was undoubtedly the cleanest, and probably the poorest.
    'Ah, well, a
schlemiel
means well but he is clumsy and foolish and things don't work out the way he expects. A
schlimazl
is just unlucky. If he made umbrellas it would stop raining. If he winds a clock, it stops. If he inherited a coffin business people would stop dying. To him it all happens badly,' said Simon. 'Eh, Mrs Grossman?'
    'Easier if you give the lady an example. Picture the scene,' said Mrs Grossman, spreading her arms. 'A cafe. A customer. A waiter. The customer is wearing his best suit, hoping to impress maybe a young lady, eh? The one who spills the soup into his lap, that is a
schlemiel.
The one on whom the soup is spilled—a
schlimazl.'
    'Abraham ibn Ezra,' announced the boy in the prayer shawl and yarmulke unexpectedly His siblings looked at him with slightly exasperated affection and his mother with whole-hearted adoration. There was no doubt who was Mrs Grossman's favourite son.
    'My son, Saul.' Mrs Grossman was bursting with pride. 'He is studying Torah, all the time Torah and Talmud, we are all so proud of him! What do you want to say to us,
bubelah?'
    'Rabbi Ezra,' said the boy, lowering thick lashes over bright eyes modestly. 'He said about the
schlimazl
, "If I sold lamps/the sun/in spite/Would shine at night." He was a poet in the twelfth century.' With this bit of information, Saul dried up and went back to his text. Phryne was impressed.
    'He is preparing for his bar mitzvah. Mr Abrahams is his friend, his father not being here to see him, Yossel, God rest his soul in peace,
alav ha-sholom
, he would have been so proud! Rabbi Cohen says Saul has a real gift.' Mrs Grossman wiped her eyes and poured out tea from the samovar—thin, straw-coloured and flavoured with lemon—into thick glasses in silver holders wrought in Europe with delicate artistry. Like the tea-cloth, these were clearly treasured possessions and perhaps all that Mrs Grossman had been able to bring from her old life in a city or a village or a
shtetl
, and perhaps she had left her own house in flames as she fled with one suitcase and several children from city to port until she finally fetched up, so improbably, in Australia, which was after all the end of the world. Phryne asked.
    'We called it the
Goldene Medina
,' said Mrs Grossman, arranging little almond biscuits on a silver plate. 'Have a biscuit, please, Mr Abrahams, Miss Fisher. The golden land, Australia, where you could pick up nuggets in the streets. We saved for years, Yossel and me, working, working, always picking up anything we could do—my Yossel was a carpenter, I could embroider, but also paint and gild and carve, he taught me, what my father would have said I didn't like to think, but he said, Yossel said, we must leave Russia, the new laws are killing us, and when the war comes the revolution will follow and maybe then they will be glad to see the back of us, they hate Jews, but they hate Christians too, and unless you want to see our Philo a soldier and our little Helen a whore, we must leave ...
ai, ai,
what a time, we worked all the hours God gave, but he was right, my Yossel
alav ha-sholom
, the revolution did come and they did let us leave, and they let us take some goods, too, only the one big box, and the children's clothes, but we made the frame of the trunk out of gold, and stitched heavy cowhide over it, and then we sat with our hearts in our mouths,
oy\
in case the customs men dropped it and it split and showed the gold ...' She rocked herself as she spoke, and her son Phillip took her hand. 'We came down into Germany where they did not want us either but let us pass, and they stole my mother's silver spoons as we passed the border and took a ship for Australia. It was so funny, we had only what we