The Enemy of the Good

by Michael Arditti

  Carla, ever the conciliator, stepped in with a breathless account of having fallen for a fellow Buddhist on a retreat. Although piqued at the competition, Susannah welcomed the reprieve, which she trusted would last until Zvi’s arrival.

  ‘What’s he like?’ she asked.

  ‘You’ll think him very New Agey. Yesterday he clasped my shoulders and, after gazing into my eyes for a good five minutes, said – promise you won’t laugh – “I think you and I are really present together.”’

  ‘Who’s laughing?’ Mike asked with a smirk.

  ‘What does he do?’ As Clement made his standard inquiry, Susannah trusted that it would be less exotic than travel agent to the stars.

  ‘He’s given up long-term goals in order to live in the here and now.’

  ‘In other words, nada,’ Mike said.

  ‘On Sunday we went walking on the Heath, past a clump of early bluebells. He heard them saying “Thank you, Curtis, for being the sort of person who doesn’t want to pick us.”’

  ‘They spoke to him?’ Mike asked, accentuating his incredulity.

  ‘On an energetic plane.’

  ‘That explains it.’

  ‘He’s such a gentle man, but the one thing calculated to make him see red is the arrogance of thinking that the world has only a physical dimension.’

  ‘Then you’d better keep him away from Mike,’ Clement said, cheering Susannah with the thought that Zvi wouldn’t be the only outsider.

  ‘When did you meet him?’ Mike asked.

  ‘Ten days ago.’

  ‘A whirlwind romance?’ Susannah asked.

  ‘Yes and no,’ Carla said.

  ‘The plot thickens!’ Clement said.

  ‘You’ll mock… I know you will,’ Carla insisted to the trio of shaking heads. ‘He says that we’ve met many times before over the years.’

  ‘Has he been stalking you?’ Mike asked.

  ‘No. Over the centuries. In former lives.’

  ‘I despair,’ Mike said.

  Susannah longed to champion Carla’s cause and atone for her past scepticism, but the doorbell intervened. Deliberately dragging her feet, she cast a final glance over the sitting room, which had been purged of far more than the television. Gone was the ancient Assyrian goddess, whose fecundity had filled one corner of her windowsill. Gone was the Rankin photograph of her sitting among a leap of shirtless Snow Leopards. Gone were any titles from her bookshelves that might cause confusion (The Naked Chef and Vile Bodies had been sent The Way of All Flesh). Only Clement’s painting of David and Jonathan had been spared the spare room, as she weighed old loyalties against new.

  She greeted Zvi in the hall, which suddenly seemed very cramped. Unsure whether she was allowed to take his hat and too shy to adopt her usual ‘Just chuck it in the bedroom’ formula, she pointed dumbly to the tabouret. As he handed her a plastic bag containing his food, plates and cutlery, she felt a twinge of disappointment at the lack of flowers. Reminding herself that their relationship rose above such trifles, she led him into the sitting room and introduced him to ‘my brother, Clement’, ‘his partner, Mike’, praying that the phrase would satisfy all sensibilities, and ‘my sister-in-law, Carla.’

  ‘Please don’t take this personally,’ Zvi said, retreating from Carla, ‘but I can’t shake your hand.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she replied. ‘I’m not menstruating.’

  Forcing a smile, Susannah poured Zvi a whisky while he chatted stiffly about the difficulties of parking to Clement, who didn’t drive, and of commuting to Carla, who worked at home. He was more forthcoming about his job, although his blunt rejection of Mike’s proposal that he should divulge the whereabouts of his clients so they could tip off the paparazzi and split the proceeds showed that his flawless grasp of English did not extend to irony. Feeling the conversation flag, Susannah sought to establish a link between the kibbutz on which Zvi was brought up and the one on which Mark worked before he went to Sussex.

  ‘He used to say he had the best time,’ Carla said, ‘swimming in the Sea of Galilee.’

  ‘And hitching to Tiberias to buy dope.’

  ‘Yes,’ Zvi said, staring sharply at Clement. ‘We also had our share of volunteers bringing hedonism to the meshek in their cheesecloth shirts and beaded necklaces. In my experience, all they really wanted was go to bed with one another.’

  ‘And with a lot of the kibbutzniks,’ Clement said, ‘if my brother was to be believed.’

  ‘What else could we do? We felt nothing for our own girls. They were like sisters. Worse. Ever since the nursery, we’d slept together, showered together, run naked together, even sat next to each other on the toilet. I grew up without any sense of shame.’

  ‘We should all be so lucky!’ Mike said.

  ‘That’s no way to raise a child.’

  ‘Surely it’s the best? Not without guilt, I grant, but without shame.’

  ‘Now you’re splitting hairs.’

  ‘Not at all. Take the example I gave to some of my Year Eights.’

  ‘Watch out!’ Clement said. ‘He’s a stickler for discipline.’

  Susannah wondered whether Zvi had deciphered the banter.

  ‘If I were to piss myself in front of you, I’d feel ashamed but not guilty. On the other hand, if I were to laugh at the fact that you’d pissed yourself, I’d feel guilty but not ashamed.’

  ‘Do all your examples come from the toilet?’

  ‘Please help yourself to cashews… olives,’ Susannah said, appalled that the battle-lines had been drawn up so soon.

  ‘The confusions, as ever, arise with sex,’ Mike went on, ignoring the dish that she waved under his nose. ‘If I were to leave here and go to the Coleherne… a pub,’ he explained.

  ‘A dive,’ Clement interjected.

  ‘Whatever. And pick somebody up, I wouldn’t feel either guilty or ashamed.’

  ‘Not even at the thought of Clement?’ Carla asked.

  ‘I’d only feel guilt if I were betraying the terms of our relationship.’ Susannah was sure that she saw her brother flinch. ‘And I’d feel no shame of any sort – unless the guy were drop-dead gorgeous and I’d bought into all the media prejudice against my middle-aged body.’

  ‘What if he was cheating on his partner?’ Susannah asked, keen to discredit his argument.

  ‘I can’t take responsibility for anyone else’s behaviour.’

  ‘That’s the difference between us,’ Zvi said.

  ‘Exactly. And the problem, if I may say so, is the way you go about it. Not by reason or evidence but by claiming to speak on behalf of the ultimate authority figure, by imposing a cruelly repressive code and insisting that we beat ourselves up if we break it. We’ve only just met, and I don’t want to make assumptions, but aren’t you in danger of making guilt and shame – the internal and the external – the same thing?’

  Susannah was loath to leave them to themselves, but she could no longer delay her retreat to the kitchen. She dismissed Carla’s offer of help, issuing her with strict and only half-playful instructions to keep the peace. Rushing through her preparations, she took the roasted fennel out of the oven and heated Zvi’s chicken soup in the microwave. In contrast to the ‘what the eye doesn’t see’ principle she had applied to spillages and even sell-by dates in the heat of previous dinner parties, she was meticulous in ensuring that neither Zvi’s containers nor his cutlery came into contact with any other food.

  Returning to summon her guests to table, she was relieved to find that the men appeared to have settled their differences. No sooner had they sat down, however, than she was disabused.

  ‘I didn’t realise it was Bring Your Own,’ Clement said as she served Zvi’s soup.

  ‘You know very well that Zvi’s kosher.’

  ‘But you said we were eating vegetarian.’

  ‘There’s still cheese, Clem!’ Susannah turned to Zvi. ‘I promise you that when you come again – if you can ever bear to come again – the cheese will be kosher
.’

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s a pleasure for me to be with your family. Besides, we use extra-kosher milk. It’s harder to find.’

  ‘Extra-kosher?’ Clement asked.

  ‘Boiled at a higher temperature.’

  ‘You really do want to sort out the sheep from the goats!’

  ‘No, just the cows.’

  Buoyed by how well Zvi was holding his ground, Susannah declared her own resolve to keep kosher. ‘What about the kitchen?’ Carla asked. ‘Don’t you have to have two of everything?’

  ‘I’ll have it remodelled,’ she said, unwilling to discuss her future in the presence of the man on whom it depended. ‘For now I’ll use separate bowls.’

  ‘Twice as much work,’ Clement said. ‘No wonder Ma called it a plot to oppress women.’

  ‘But when she grew up, women were oppressed. It was seventy years ago.’

  ‘I think your brother’s teasing you,’ Zvi said. ‘No other religion respects women as much as Judaism.’

  ‘Really?’ Clement asked. ‘But I understood that your first prayer every morning was to thank God for not making you one.’

  ‘Yes, because it allows us to do the mitzvahs that aren’t binding on women,’ Zvi replied with a composure that Susannah envied. ‘They don’t have the time to put on tefillin or go to prayers when they’re busy looking after children.’

  ‘I think that’s what’s known as a double bind.’

  ‘In any case it’s not the first prayer but the second.’

  ‘So what’s the first?’

  ‘More fennel anyone?’ Susannah asked.

  ‘To thank God for the cock that distinguishes between night and day.’

  ‘Well, I’m with you on that one,’ Mike said.

  Susannah stifled a scream as Clement and Carla chuckled. Her dream of their all making common cause, despite their differences, lay shattered. She grabbed the empty plates and took them into the kitchen, more inclined to throw them against the wall than to soak them in one of the two brightly coloured bowls she had bought in readiness for her new life. Clement had never taken her seriously. As a child, she had had to make herself the butt of his and Mark’s jokes in order to be included in their games. He held her in as much contempt as he had done when she was five. He knew how much Zvi meant to her and yet he had done nothing but goad him from the moment he arrived. Carla and Mike were little better. On a positive note, she need have no fears about divided loyalties. There was no longer any doubt as to where hers lay.

  She took Zvi’s casserole into the dining room and returned to the kitchen for the fusilli. Her prayer that the conversation would have more in common than the food went unanswered when, after a pause for compliments, Mike resumed the attack.

  ‘Going back to the cock – ’

  ‘Must we?’ Zvi asked.

  ‘Where do you stand on those of us who give thanks for the human sort?’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘I think you do. For myself I couldn’t care less, but I have a lover. Not a partner, Susannah, or a friend or a significant euphemism, but the love of my life. And he believes. And I’ve watched him tie himself in knots, as he struggles to find a place for himself in texts that were written thousands of years ago, with the deliberate aim of excluding him.’

  ‘Not him, his desires,’ Zvi said. ‘The Torah tells us clearly that God has a plan for each and every one of us. “Male and female created He them”.’

  ‘No room at the inn,’ Clement said. ‘That is metaphorically.’

  ‘Don’t you think I also have to fight my desires?’ Zvi asked, filling Susannah with the dread of a revelation that would tear her in two. ‘A desire to touch: a desire to kiss: a desire to be close to a woman. But I know they’ll be transformed into something infinitely richer when I marry.’ At once her fears were assuaged. He had not only spoken of ‘touch’ and ‘kiss’ for the first time, but he had done so while holding her gaze, transporting her to an unimagined pinnacle of bliss. The threat of dissension caused her no more concern than the choice of coffee or tisane with which she ended the meal.

  She next saw Zvi after the Sabbath service when they paid their regular visit to the café. They sat alone, apart from an elderly woman carrying on a voluble conversation with her shopping bag. The proprietor brought their drinks before returning to the counter, which he polished assiduously. Susannah looked at Zvi, who stared deep into his cup.

  ‘Busy day yesterday?’ she asked, careful not to reveal her hurt at the lack of a thank you call.

  ‘I heard from your friend Liam Denny. He wants me to arrange for him and his wife to go to the ashram in Rishikesh.’

  ‘Terrific! Play your cards right and you’ll have the whole of Alice’s Kitchen.’

  ‘It may not be that easy. He’s going on to Dharamsala and expects me to set up an audience with the Dalai Lama.’

  ‘Liam? Oh, of course! You remember Lotus Flower? It was global!’

  ‘It’s his wife’s idea. You can tell he’s devoted to her.’

  So devoted, Susannah recalled, that he had been spotted visiting a prostitute on the night she was in labour. Her efforts to bury the story were not something that she chose to share with Zvi.

  ‘How did you enjoy your trip to darkest Notting Hill?’ she asked casually.

  ‘I liked your sister-in-law.’

  ‘Clement wasn’t at his best,’ she said, angry that she should feel the need to defend him. ‘He’s been going through a rough patch ever since the business at Roxborough… A window he designed was vandalised.’ Zvi’s blank look brought home the scale of the Lubavitch seclusion. ‘My mother says he’s painted nothing since then. And painting’s his entire life.’

  ‘It’s sad to see a gifted man squandering his talents.’

  ‘It’s only been six months. I’m certain he’ll soon be back in the studio.’

  ‘I meant more than that. Flying in the face of Nature. Flying in the face of God.’

  There was no surer measure of the distance she had travelled in a few short months than that she let his remark pass unchallenged. She refused to allow family feeling to blind her to the truth. She feared, however, that the movement had been all one way. Her commitment to the Lubavitch had yet to be matched by Zvi’s commitment to her. Rivka’s account of her lightning courtship served to underline his indecision. Afraid of betraying herself, she focused her attention on the café, finding to her amusement that the mad old woman was in fact a devoted dog lover. The sight of the furry brown ears poking up from the shopping bag steeled her resolve to speak.

  ‘Zvi, I know it’s against the rules but will you look at me for a moment?’ He fixed his soulful green eyes on her and, to her consternation, she was the one who was forced to turn away. ‘In five months time I’m going to be forty,’ she said hesitantly.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Is that all you can say? I thought it only fair to tell you.’

  ‘There was no need.’

  ‘Why? Do I look forty?’

  ‘Not at all. You know you don’t. You look like someone who doesn’t look forty. I’m sorry. I’m not very good at guessing women’s ages.’

  ‘Or paying them compliments.’ She suddenly warmed to Mr 9½ inches and his statistical precision. ‘I wanted to let you know in case you have any plans for… for anything.’

  ‘Plans?’ he asked, lost in thought. ‘Yes, of course. We should have a party. I’ll speak to Rivka.’

  ‘No, not a party.’ She stood up. ‘I’m sorry. You must have a lot to do. I ought to go.’

  ‘No, it’s me who’s sorry. Please, sit down. I understand what you’re saying. And I’m very grateful. It’s just so hard for me to speak of these things.’

  ‘Do you think it’s easy for me? Women aren’t supposed to take the lead in the everyday world, let alone the Lubavitch. But I had to speak out. I can’t pretend it doesn’t matter. Not if you want… I want… I want so much. Some men might think twice if they wanted children.’
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br />   ‘I want children. And, if the Lord wills it, I shall have them. But the important thing is to have them with the woman I love.’

  His bashful smile was the closest he had come to declaring himself. Seizing the moment, she invited him to spend the weekend at Beckley. Despite the complications of travel and his commitment to the Sunday youth group, he accepted.

  Her first task on returning home was to ring her parents. She was sure that her mother must have been given a detailed – if distorted – picture of Zvi by Clement, but she put on a convincing front, greeting the news of the impending visit with joy and surprise in equal measure, even after hearing of the Lubavitch connection. ‘My grandmother would have been pleased,’ she said cryptically, before handing the phone to her father.

  ‘The man’s a duke?’ he asked, in dismay.

  ‘No, Pa, a Jew!’ she shouted, promising herself to tackle him on his deafness.

  Two days later she faxed them a list of requirements as rigorous as those for a royal visit. Zvi would be taking his own food; although, as a concession to her parents’ hospitality, he had agreed to a dinner of salmon and fruit salad on their first night. To avoid a clash of crockery, her mother decreed that they would eat off paper plates.

  ‘We’ll picnic. It’ll be such fun.’

  ‘It’s not a game, Ma,’ she said anxiously. ‘It’s his… it’s our life.’

  Her anxieties were compounded by a bruising few days at the office and a frantic dash to Paddington station on Friday afternoon, where she almost missed Zvi. The packed train ensured that they were well-chaperoned, all the more so when Zvi elected to stand in the buffet rather than risk a nudge from a restless neighbour. They were met at Oxford by Mr Shepherd, who greeted Zvi with the guarded smile of one who had holidayed for the past twenty years on the Norfolk Broads. As they approached the house, rolling through the finely wrought gates and down the sweeping avenue of poplars, she felt the pleasurable tug of her roots, however tangled. She was touched to find her parents waiting for them in the hall. Her mother extended a lacy hand to Zvi.