The Enemy of the Good

by Michael Arditti

  ‘I wanted to ask…’

  ‘Yes?’ Her hopes were revived by his evident confusion.

  ‘I wanted to ask whether you’d like to spend Shabbat in my community.’

  ‘Oh!’ She smiled in both relief and alarm. This was ‘come up for a coffee’, ‘see my etchings’, and ‘meet my parents’, all in one.

  ‘Thank you. I’d like that very much.’

  4

  The office reopened after New Year. Matt had been busy on Broadband, conspiring with fellow dissidents at IhateChristmas.com. Marcus had met his perfect man at a Boxing Day disco, enjoyed five days of and on ecstasy, only to be jilted on New Year’s Eve, leaving him torn between celibacy and suicide, until his best girlfriend (the intonation left the gender indeterminate), convinced him that there were ‘plenty more gorillas in the jungle’ and dragged him off to another club. Davinia had spent a week in Plymouth where the Atlases were appearing at a charity gala, her romance with Nirmal having blossomed since Woking in spite of his touring, her qualms and Mandy’s disapproval. Susannah knew that the holidays were over when she heard Adrian on the phone to a restaurant – she failed to catch the name but it had to be one of a select group – complaining loudly about his table, insisting that his C-list guest had been an aberration and demanding the same treatment as when he went with Precious or Rickie Day.

  She spent the morning offering advice and support to Adrian and Elspeth who were both having trouble with clients. Adrian had discovered the drawback of working for someone as insecure as Ben Dutton, who rang ten times a day to check that he was busy on the campaign, until he finally lost patience and snapped ‘Well, I would be if I was given a chance.’ He had so far placed stories in two Style sections but he needed something bigger and asked Susannah if she thought she could persuade Precious to wear the trainers on her forthcoming tour. She promised to try but, given the slippers incident at the health farm, she doubted whether the singer would be keen to draw attention to her size eight feet. Elspeth, meanwhile, was being bullied by the London promoter of a Bavarian folk group. He was unhappy with the lacklustre coverage, insisting that he had gone to Granville’s for the kind of ‘wacky’ publicity they had generated for The Pink Elephants, refusing to admit that dancers in dirndls were intrinsically less droll than fat middle-aged comediennes.

  After lunch she was waylaid by Matt, who wanted to pitch for a new reality TV show, the first to make full use of the Internet. In a technique pioneered on porn sites, it was the viewers themselves via their computers who would bid to set tasks for contestants. The concept had everything: money; drama; sex. The audience would be global and the potential huge.

  ‘Don’t you see?’ he urged, ‘this is the supreme equality: not just the democratisation of society but the democratisation of dreams. It’s a historical inevitability, the ultimate in mass consumption. Think! Up to a hundred years ago, the world had a fixed hierarchy: rich man, castle; poor man, gate. As the market grew more powerful, it demanded greater fluidity. Aristocracy gave way to celebrity. You too could buy your stately pile so long as you sold enough records, scored enough goals or starred in enough films. But even that didn’t satisfy the market. The new notability became as distant as the old nobility: gods to revere rather than consumers to copy. Reality TV has gone the extra mile, taken the process to its logical conclusion: the celebrities have become nonentities. It’s the final victory of the man in the mall! You don’t need birth; you don’t need talent; you just need need. Given the right exposure, everyone can be a star.’

  Telling Matt that he made her feel old and herself that it was hyperbole, she agreed to study his proposal, but the outline alone plunged her into gloom. Pushing it to one side, she rang Rachel, who was her confidante in all things Zvi. Although she was determined to keep her fledgling feelings hidden – at least until she could be sure of their taking flight – she thought it politic to make an exception of Rachel, whom she suspected of nursing her own hopes of her boss. Much to her relief, Rachel decided that playing cupid to a friend’s romance was preferable to pining. She rapidly became its most enthusiastic champion, keeping her as well informed of Zvi’s affairs as if she had leafed through his diary. After listening to Rachel rhapsodise about Zvi, with a licence she feared that she might soon have to revoke, Susannah plied her with questions about the Shabbat meal: what to wear; what to take; whether to make any special preparations. Rachel proved to be little help, insisting that her hosts would accept her exactly as she was, whereupon Susannah, realising that she had another point of reference, rang her mother.

  ‘You forget, darling, my parents were communists.’

  ‘But your grandparents were observant.’

  ‘It was all so long ago.’

  ‘Can’t you try to remember?’

  ‘They died, darling. That’s all I remember. Why do you want to know? Is it for a campaign?’

  ‘Yes. In a way it is.’

  She left the office early on Friday evening, prompting speculation that she was jetting off for a weekend of skiing in Gstaad or shopping in New York. Pride as well as policy prevented her from confessing to a night of sexual segregation in Hendon. After a luxurious bath, she tried on a string of outfits before opting for the casual corporate look of a sage green Nicole Farhi suit with a Tiffany topaz brooch and two ivory bangles. Not even the Finchley Road in one of its periodic gridlocks could dampen the soul-stirring blend of religion and romance racing through her. She followed Zvi’s directions to the Rabbi’s house where, as an unmarried man (how she longed to delete the adjective and possess the noun!), he was a regular Friday night guest. She parked outside a nondescript house, with a pebble-dashed lower storey and a half-timbered top, and walked up the steep drive to the front door. It was opened by a gangly teenage boy with tousled hair, sensuous lips, wan skin and bottle-top glasses, who introduced himself as the Rabbi’s son, Tali. Making no move to take her coat (she wondered if it were a boy-thing or a touch-thing), he left her alone in the hall and went to fetch his mother.

  She peered surreptitiously into the study, where a crowd of men stood among the overflowing bookcases. One of them was Zvi in animated conversation with the Rabbi, and she seized the chance to gaze at him unobserved. Suddenly he glanced her way, with a smile of such warmth that it took all her self-restraint not to rush in. She edged back into the hall and examined the photographs that filled an entire wall from picture-rail to dado, rows of happy faces in academic hoods, wedding veils and prayer shawls, all with the same thick spectacles and sallow complexions as Tali. Just as she turned to the opposite wall, on which four gilt-framed portraits of the Rebbe hung more formally, the Rabbi’s wife climbed up the steps from the kitchen. Introducing herself as Rivka, she welcomed Susannah to the house, took her coat and thanked her for the bunch of snapdragons. Susannah then asked about the picture gallery.

  ‘My family,’ Rivka said proudly. ‘We have seventeen children and fifty-four grandchildren. Blessed be the Lord God of the Universe!’

  ‘Heavens!’ Susannah exclaimed, glancing at her unaccountably trim figure. ‘It must make life very expensive at… Hanukah.’

  ‘There are more important gifts than presents,’ Rivka said. ‘Besides, they’re scattered across the globe. New York. Melbourne. Tel Aviv. We only have three still at home.’ Although the sleeping arrangements in what must at best have been a four-bedroomed house struck horror in Susannah who in Wells had been given a separate bedroom for her dolls, Rivka’s obvious contentment persuaded her that there might also be more important freedoms than space.

  ‘This,’ Rivka said, in a reverential voice, ‘is our Rebbe.’

  ‘I know. I’ve seen pictures of him at the Kabbalah class.’

  ‘You’ll see them in every Lubavitch house. Many people believe him to be the Messiah.’

  ‘But not you?’

  ‘It’s not possible, since he didn’t rebuild the Temple. But he remains a vital presence in all our lives.’

  Rivka led Susannah dow
n to the kitchen, where she introduced her to four smiling women: Ettel, her sister, who was visiting from Chicago; Eliezar, her married daughter from Wimbledon; Rebekkah, her youngest daughter, who still lived at home; and Layah from the Kabbalah class, who greeted her with a hug and the heartening affirmation that they were already ‘old friends’. The kitchen, with its ramshackle cupboards, mismatched stools and scuffed sinks, was markedly less elegant than Layah’s. There was, however, the same abundance of food, with every surface covered in dishes prepared before sundown. No sooner had Susannah taken off her coat than Rivka announced it was time to eat. Mortified at having kept them waiting, she followed Layah into the candlelit dining room which, once her eyes had adjusted to the shadows, she could see was dominated by a mahogany table set for fourteen and a heavy sideboard boasting the kind of ornate silver that her parents had banished to the lumber room on the grounds of both upkeep and taste.

  She took her seat beside Rivka at the foot of the table, with Eliezar opposite and Layah on her right. Rivka sent Rebekkah to fetch the men, who entered in heated debate. For all that the light was deceptive, Susannah could have sworn that Zvi winked at her as he moved to his place, which she was gratified to see was next to the Rabbi. She was surprised to find the gender divide enforced even at the dinner table, with the Rabbi’s two youngest sons, Tali and Yosef, providing the buffer. When everyone was seated, the Rabbi began to chant. The words were mellifluous but impenetrable and she was grateful to Layah who, sensing her bafflement, whispered that, like every other Lubavitch husband on Shabbat, he was reciting a passage from Proverbs with the phrase: ‘A woman of valour, who can find? for her price is far above rubies.’ As she turned to Rivka, whose eyes were glistening and whose face seemed to have lost its lines, Susannah acknowledged that this must be one of those ‘important gifts’.

  The Rabbi poured a cup of wine and, after reciting a blessing, raised it to his lips and passed it down the table for everyone to take a sip. He then led the company into the kitchen where they held their hands beneath a tap and recited another blessing. Although piqued that no one thought to explain the ritual, Susannah resolved to see it as a sign that she fitted in. She moved to the sink to wash her hands but was defeated by the blessing. She felt like the Magdalen science scholar who, in her father’s story, forgot that it was his turn to say grace in Hall. Knowing no Latin, he panicked until, in a flash, he recalled a household litany: ‘Bisto, Sanitas, Domestos, Lux.’ She suppressed the image, angry at the note of Oxford flippancy that had crept into her thoughts. It was impossible to tell if the story were true or just a means for her father to distance himself from genuine belief. Either way, it mocked the sincerity of her surroundings. She bowed her head before returning to the table, where the Rabbi uncovered two plaited loaves, blessed them and broke off chunks for everyone to dip in salt. Disregarding her diet, she followed suit.

  She was enchanted by the modest meal of fish balls, chicken soup and roast lamb, and still more so by the women’s conversation which centred on Zvi. She wondered whether it marked an acceptance – even endorsement – of their relationship or simply his status as the one unattached man in the room. She had feared that Rivka, with a sixteen year-old daughter on her hands, would see her as a rival. It was clear from her every um and ah that Rebekkah, although forbidden any thought of romance, was smitten. Rivka, however, was the soul of kindness, gently asking her about her family, eager to establish their all-important ties of faith. In response, Susannah emphasised her Polish side, savouring the irony that her mother’s past, once a source of embarrassment, should now be her saving grace. She shuddered to recall how, as a child playing for sympathy, she had made up for the Nazis’ failure by transporting her mother to Auschwitz, until a friend exposed the deception by demanding to see her tattoo. At least she had retained the right to boast of her fighter-pilot father. Now, however, it was his background that she played down, describing him merely as a retired theologian, trusting that his notoriety had not penetrated their closed world.

  Their conversation was punctuated by snatches of songs from the top end of the table, some wordless, others in Yiddish or Hebrew, which to Susannah’s untutored ear lacked both rhyme and reason.

  ‘The men sing when the spirit moves them,’ Layah said.

  ‘Does it never move you?’

  ‘Not in mixed company.’

  As she eavesdropped on the men, Susannah was amazed to find that their talk turned entirely on religion, which they treated not with the shamefaced air of her father and his colleagues but with passionate commitment. Her initial confusion at hearing them speak of biblical figures as though they were personal friends gave way to admiration that the founders of their faith remained so alive to them. It was not that they lived in the past, but rather that they refused to admit a distinction between past and present. Moses’ clash with Aaron, Laban’s deception of Jacob, and David’s lust for Bathsheba were as immediate as the latest cabinet rift, City scandal or celebrity love triangle. Having been raised on a diet of compromise, she was disturbed when their voices grew strident, but Rivka set her mind at rest: ‘We Jews have a long history of disputation – and not just with one another. Remember that Abraham, Moses and Job argued with God.’

  Susannah would gladly have sat there all night, rapt by a discussion which showed no sign of flagging, but at half-past twelve she knew that she must make a move. Unlike the other guests, she had to drive home and, besides, she had accepted Rivka’s invitation to join her for morning service at the Chabad House. She thanked her for an evening that had been perfect in every respect, adding silently ‘apart from not having a moment in private with Zvi’. She should have realised that, in his case, ‘Shabbat in my community’ meant precisely that, rather than ‘Shabbat with me’. Nevertheless, she had felt no strain in their separation. The presence of the others served to validate rather than to blunt her feelings, proof that theirs was a relationship which embraced the world, not a folie à deux.

  Anxious not to disrupt the party, she said a discreet goodbye and left the table. At a nod from the Rabbi, Zvi stood to escort her to her car. For the first time they were alone, although she had followed his every word during dinner, as thrilled when he scored a point as when she had used to watch Chris in his Sunday morning league (she angrily dismissed the analogy, which had sprung on her unawares). She felt a knife-edge tension in the air and pictured him taking her in his arms in defiance of all the rules. Yet, while the impulsive part of her longed for the evening to end as it would have done with any other boyfriend, the judicious part gave thanks for the difference. Despite his failure to help her with her coat, even when her arm caught in the sleeve, he had wrapped her in something far warmer. Moreover, he invited her for coffee after the service.

  ‘This time, the café’ll be open. I’ve checked.’

  Driving back into central London, Susannah knew that she had come to the moment of truth. In the three months since her introduction to the Lubavitch, her life had been turned inside out. She had joined the Kabbalah class in a bid to find something that would relieve her nagging sense of discontent. In the event, she had found far more than she had dared to hope. These were people whose lives had a coherence that she had never before encountered outside books. They had given up so much of what she had once believed to be indispensable – art, films, fashion, even casual contact between the sexes – but which she now saw to be a distraction. Hard as it was to admit, she had found freedom in a world of constraints. She felt a tremor of unease at the thought of her family’s and friends’ reactions. She heard Clement’s ‘You must be mad!’ as clearly as the honking of the car behind at the changing lights. It was up to her to show them all that she had never been so sane.

  She arrived home and prepared for bed. ‘It’s like I’m seeing you for the first time,’ she said to the face in the mirror. ‘This must be how an adopted child feels when she tracks down her mother. I love the people who brought me up. They’re decent and honourable and I’
ll always respect them as my parents. But I know now that I belong somewhere else. At last my life makes sense. I am a Jew.’ Suddenly self-conscious, she thrust her hand over her mouth, picturing what people, not least her clients, would think if they should catch a glimpse of her. Then, with a burst of elation, she realised that she no longer cared.

  She had not been at such a peak of anticipation since the sixth form disco. She barely slept and her chief fear was that her eyes, which were accounted her best feature, would be bloodshot and puffy. Unable to risk more than a hint of mascara, she was grateful that Zvi was forbidden to look her full in the face. At ten o’clock, she drove to the Chabad House, following Rivka’s directions, which were less thorough than Zvi’s. She parked behind a run-down shopping centre, made out the inconspicuous sign and, announcing herself over the intercom, walked in. She climbed a narrow staircase to the first floor, trying to identify the mulchy smell that wafted down from the kitchen. She passed a small cloakroom and stood on the threshold of a drab meeting room with a low polystyrene ceiling. It was unequally divided by a net curtain: the larger, brighter part was filled with men; the smaller, darker part held two old women. She searched for Zvi in the crowd of wide-brimmed hats, long black coats, charcoal suits, white shirts and tasselled prayer-shawls, finally spotting him standing by the window, his face caught in the light that filtered through the slatted blind. She tried to catch his eye, until the awareness of her irreverence forced her into a hasty retreat.

  She took a seat close – but not adjacent – to the two women, who welcomed her with a smile and resumed their conversation. She was surprised not to see Rivka, despite the loose ‘between eleven and twelve’ set for their meeting. She fixed her attention on the lectern, which was perfectly visible through the curtain. She was amazed at the informality of the congregation who, with their prayer shawls over their heads, swayed back and forth, chanting discordantly and bursting into spontaneous song, before striding across the room to talk to friends. Yet, for all that it was incongruous and incomprehensible, she had a strong sense of belonging. Sitting in the austere, inelegant Chabad House, she felt that she had come home. She was connected to a living tradition that stretched back three thousand years, merely skipping two generations of her own family.