The Enemy of the Good

by Michael Arditti

  ‘Not in the case of Mark and me.’

  ‘Mark’s death was an accident, a tragic accident; Agata’s was part of a systematic plan.’

  Clement seemed stunned by her revelations and, after returning the photograph to the drawer, which she pointedly left unlocked, she led him downstairs. They entered the morning room to find Edwin sitting as impassively as a waxwork. The impression was sustained as she kissed his sallow cheek, prompting Linda to remark that ‘we’ were spending an hour out of bed, as if she had carried him from cot to playpen. Marta defied her disapproval to perch on the arm of his chair.

  ‘How are you, my darling? Have you had a good day?’ She checked Linda’s attempt to answer for him with a brittle smile. He gazed at her with a vacancy that she prayed was confined to his eyes. ‘Are you in pain?’ She might have taken his silence for a negative had Clement not intervened.

  ‘He knows. You can see that he knows. Isn’t that pain enough?’

  ‘We can’t increase the steroids,’ Linda said. ‘It might be dangerous.’

  ‘Oh sure,’ Clement replied. ‘He might have to postpone the round of golf he had planned for the morning.’

  ‘You take a break, Nurse,’ Marta said, ‘we’ll sit with him now.’

  ‘Well, I have been on my feet since lunchtime.’

  ‘That’s settled then.’

  She watched as Clement knelt at Edwin’s side, rubbing his hand. ‘How do you feel, Pa?’

  Edwin turned his face towards him before slowly articulating the syllable ‘Ark!’

  ‘No, it’s Clement, Pa. Clement!’

  Clement was so distressed by a confusion that struck at the very core of his being that she longed to share her suspicion that, in invoking Mark, it was not that his father had failed to recognise him but rather that, at the end of his life, he was reliving its greatest loss. Fearing, however, that the disclosure would hurt him still more, she kept silent.

  The next four days passed in a haze of sickness and anxiety. Marta pondered the irony that her worries about Shoana should keep her from dwelling on the full horror of Edwin’s condition. She rang her every evening, red pencil in hand, sticking to the key markers of Edwin’s decline such as the insertion of a catheter and the switch to a morphine pump, rather than expounding on the day-to-day degradations. Then, on the fifth day, Shoana pre-empted her call with the news that she had had the result of the Chorionic Villus Sampling.

  ‘Oh yes?’ Marta said breezily, as if she could influence the outcome by her tone.

  ‘It’s bad, Ma. It’s the worst. My baby has Down’s.’

  The days of anticipation did nothing to temper the shock. Marta grabbed hold of a chair to keep from falling.

  ‘Oh darling, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘There are different degrees of Down’s, of course. Jan made that very clear.’

  ‘Then there’s hope?’

  ‘But it’s Down’s. Down’s! The good news is that, now the bleeding’s stopped, I should carry for my full term.’

  ‘And how are you feeling?’ Marta asked, despising herself for the inanity of a question which avoided the more dangerous one of ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Right now I feel numb. Dazed. Dead. Zvi says it’s a test. Like Abraham sacrificing Isaac.’ Marta wanted to slap him. ‘Except that, in our case, we have to let the child live.’

  To her dismay, Shoana misconstrued her failure to mention abortion. No matter that she had already resolved to refuse one, she was offended by her mother’s withholding the solution she proposed so readily for everyone else. It was as though they were living in a soap opera where, even when behaving out of character, people remained true to type.

  She reminded herself that the decision on keeping the baby rested with Shoana and Zvi. Set against their dilemma, her own feelings were an irrelevance. She agonised nonetheless and, after a sleepless night in which the various options hammered at her brain, she went down to the morning room where she wearily told Ruth that she would give Edwin his breakfast. No sooner had she lifted the spoonful of apple puree to his mouth than he clamped his teeth on it. At first she presumed that he was playing games and felt a rush of anger as at a wayward child. Then she caught sight of his eyes and was appalled by their desolation. Either he was unable to open his mouth or he could no longer make the link between spoon and tongue and food. Whichever it was, she knew at once that she must ask Shoana to come to Beckley. Faced with this vision of her future, she would defy the zealots and take the necessary steps.

  She voiced her request with such urgency that Shoana drove down the next morning. Marta had expected her to look pale, but she was not prepared for the haggard figure waiting for her in the drawing room, her eyes raw from weeping and her skin as lustreless as her wig.

  ‘Before you say anything,’ Shoana said at once, ‘we’re definitely keeping it. “Thou shalt not kill” is one of God’s commandments.’

  ‘God lets a lot of babies die,’ Marta said gently.

  ‘That’s His choice. We don’t have one. I’m not prepared to discuss it. Not with you. And certainly not with Clement.’

  Marta said nothing, trusting that the sight of Edwin would put her case more eloquently than any argument. She led her into the morning room where Clement and Linda were sitting on either side of the bed, the nurse examining charts and Clement gazing at the recumbent figure like a pilgrim at a shrine. Shoana and Clement exchanged a cursory kiss, while Linda, with rare sensitivity, withdrew to the parlour. Shoana took over the vacated seat and held her father’s hand, visibly shocked by his deterioration. The effect was heightened since Marta had persuaded Linda to reduce the morning’s morphine, insisting that her husband would wish to be at his most lucid for his daughter’s visit. She felt no qualms since she knew that Edwin – the old Edwin, the true Edwin – would consider it a small price to pay for the chance to concentrate his daughter’s mind.

  ‘It’s Shoana, Pa… Nanna,’ she added as a concession. ‘Doesn’t he know me?’ she asked when neither name elicited a response.

  ‘The only thing he knows now is pain,’ Clement said.

  ‘You mustn’t give up, Pa. I’m going to have a baby. Don’t you want to see your grandchild?’

  ‘See?’ Clement interjected. ‘Even if his eyes haven’t totally gone by then, his mind will have.’

  ‘It’s God’s will,’ Shoana said routinely. ‘Blessed be the Lord of the Universe.’

  ‘What is?’ Clement asked. ‘His condition or yours?’

  ‘I don’t have to justify myself to you. I came to see Pa.’

  ‘Clement’s right, darling,’ Marta said. ‘I was too caught up in my own concerns to see.’

  ‘Clement’s always right! Well, this has nothing to do with him. It’s my body,’ she said tauntingly. ‘My right to choose.’

  ‘I know how you feel, Nanna,’ Clement said, as Marta braced herself for the outburst that never came. ‘You think God is punishing you for your past mistakes… your relationship with Chris.’

  ‘You know nothing about me. You never did.’ Her involuntary flinch suggested that he knew more than she cared to admit.

  ‘Illness… impairment isn’t a punishment, I know.’

  ‘You wish!’

  Edwin’s groan cut them short and Clement moved forward to check on his catheter. Finding that the bag was full, he called Linda, who brought a welcome air of detachment to the room. Shoana stood up to give her space, but she insisted that there was no need, emptying the bag as casually as if it were a vase. Marta watched as Shoana’s desire to prove herself as resilient as her mother and brother prevailed over her newfound modesty code and lifelong squeamishness. Seizing the moment, she proposed that Edwin be given a bedpan. Linda, eager to avoid ‘mishaps’, agreed, attaching him to the pulley above the bed and winching him up eighteen inches where, for several harrowing seconds, he was left dangling before she laboriously lowered him. When Shoana, horrified by Linda’s intimate discussion of her father’s bowels, fl
ed from the room with a cry of ‘This is intolerable!’, Marta trusted that Edwin would forgive her this latest humiliation. Rubbing his unresponsive hand, she was convinced that, if ever his suffering were to serve a purpose, it would be now.

  Having glimpsed Shoana striding off into the woods, she was relieved when she returned in time for lunch. The relief quickly faded as she watched her unpack her Tupperware, her resistance to Mrs Shepherd’s game pie showing that she was in no mood to compromise.

  ‘How much more of this can he take?’ Shoana asked, gazing at the empty chair at the head of the table.

  ‘This is just the beginning,’ Clement replied.

  ‘I thought the consultant said that, if he had no treatment or the treatment failed, he had a maximum of three months.’

  ‘Everyone’s different,’ Marta said. ‘Your father may be eighty-three but he has the constitution of an ox.’

  ‘You told me you were thinking of stopping any active treatment,’ she said, choosing her words with care.

  ‘We’ve moved far beyond that,’ Marta said. ‘He’s off all medication except for steroids. They could reduce those and increase the morphine, but it would simply prolong the agony. The consultant explained that taking patients off steroids makes them slip into a coma and you think the end is at hand. But, since they’re given no water, the swelling in the brain goes down and they come round. So paradoxically they can last longer.’

  ‘Are you sure he’s having enough morphine?’

  ‘To do what?’ Clement asked.

  ‘To stop him suffering! What do you think?’

  ‘We could give him too much morphine and stop him suffering forever.’

  ‘I didn’t hear that,’ Shoana said, loudly chewing her sandwich.

  ‘Shall I repeat it?’

  ‘Not now, Clement,’ Marta said, to no avail.

  ‘It’s for God alone to take life.’

  ‘We wouldn’t be taking his life but shortening the process of his death.’

  ‘And you accuse me of self-deception!’

  ‘What he is now isn’t just a travesty of what he was, but an affront to his deepest beliefs.’

  ‘What does he believe? I’ve lost track.’

  ‘He believes in humanity and we’re failing him. I believe in God and He’ll welcome him.’

  ‘“Thou shalt not kill!” How does that fit with your belief in God?’

  ‘Very easily. For a start, in some translations, it’s “Thou shalt not commit murder.”’

  ‘How convenient!’

  ‘No, accurate. Some killings aren’t murders: a terminally ill man; a defective foetus.’ Marta blenched as he articulated the link that had been implicit from the start of the discussion, although, to her surprise, Shoana made no attempt to respond. ‘Besides,’ Clement added, ‘if you’re so keen on the Commandments, what about “Honour thy Father and thy Mother”? How better than by honouring his wishes? You were with us in the hospital when he said he wanted to die.’

  ‘That was weeks ago. He isn’t saying it now.’

  ‘He can’t say anything now! It’s too late. But look at his eyes; they say it all.’

  ‘That’s enough, Clement,’ Marta said. ‘Shoana’s upset. She’s not as used to him as we are.’

  ‘Then she should bow to our better judgement. I can’t bear to see him like this a moment more.’

  ‘Exactly!’ Shoana said. ‘You can’t bear it! You, you!’

  ‘That’s just where you’re wrong. I could walk away today, go abroad for the winter and never have to see him again. Where can he go? He can’t even get out of bed!’

  ‘That’s true, darling,’ Marta said.

  ‘You, of all people, Ma, should remember who were the greatest enthusiasts for euthanasia,’ Shoana said defiantly.

  ‘I remember more than you think,’ Marta replied, the faces in the photograph blotting out those in the room. ‘But your father’s case is different. His isn’t an “inferior life” but a mockery of one. It’s no longer a life at all, but an existence. His every function is impaired.’

  ‘It’s easy to accept God’s will when it suits us. We have to learn to accept it when it doesn’t.’

  ‘Your father no longer believes in God.’

  ‘Who knows? The Lord may be using this to restore his faith. You’ve no right to deny him that chance.’

  ‘How can he have a faith when he doesn’t have a mind?’ Clement asked.

  ‘I wanted him to see his grandchild,’ Shoana said, turning to Marta. ‘That may not be possible. But one thing I can guarantee: if you do anything – anything at all – to harm Pa, you won’t be seeing him either.’

  Shoana left the table and returned to the morning room, assuring Marta and Clement, when they came to join her, that Edwin’s blinks were signs of recognition and his involuntary lip-movements smiles. She sat by his side for half an hour and then, after a strained goodbye to her mother and brother and a promise to her father to visit him at the weekend, drove home, leaving them to lapse into the familiar routine. The difference lay in the burning question hanging in the air, which Marta forced herself to address at dinner.

  ‘I can’t, Clement,’ she said, refusing to elaborate. ‘Whatever we may have agreed before, I can’t do it. Your sister would never forgive me.’

  ‘She need never know.’

  ‘No? She’ll pick up on the slightest change in his condition. And I can’t lie. Not to Shoana.’

  ‘So she’ll let Pa suffer to salve her conscience?’

  ‘It won’t be long now, please God!’

  ‘How long is long? Every minute is a lifetime for him.’

  She made no answer, acutely aware that, for all her pledges to stand by Edwin, she had failed him at the critical moment. She trusted he would understand, having understood her so well for fifty years, that she had to look to the future: not just to her own need for the child but to the child’s need for her, as it struggled to find a place in a world that worshipped perfection.

  ‘I’ll take care of everything, Ma. All I want from you is your blessing. If what’s holding you back is a fear of antagonising Shoana, don’t worry! There’s no reason for her ever to find out. Why not take a break? Stay with a friend for a few days? You’re wiped out. No one would blame you.’

  ‘Except myself! How can I abandon your father now, when he needs me more than ever?’

  ‘No. What he needs is what you won’t give him.’

  ‘You say that, but how can you be sure?’

  ‘Ma please! Must we go through all this again?’

  ‘Yes!’ she said, startled by her own vehemence. ‘And again and again and again. This isn’t some old sofa we’re throwing out. It’s your father. My husband. My life.’

  ‘And his life, Ma? Doesn’t that count for anything?’

  ‘I should be with him. If we do it, I should be here to hold his hand.’

  ‘That’s fine by me, but what about Shoana?’

  ‘We could keep it from her for a day or two. I could stay with him – with you – and then leave… Oh, I can’t believe we’re sitting here, discussing it in such a cold-blooded way!’

  ‘It won’t work, Ma. What about Linda and Ruth and Mr and Mrs Shepherd? Are they all to be sworn to secrecy? Then there’s the death certificate…’

  ‘Please! I can’t think straight.’

  ‘Then let someone else do the thinking for a change. I know how much it hurts, but what difference can one night make after fifty odd years?’

  ‘More than you’ll ever know.’

  ‘Besides how would he recognise you? He’s buried somewhere deep inside himself.’

  His heartfelt conviction swayed her. He was right about Edwin’s wishes. She had no ethical objections to them, only gut fears. Whatever the pain of deserting his deathbed, it was nothing to that of letting him linger on in misery. Dying was not always as clear-cut as it was on a certificate. For weeks she had been a widow in all but name.

  ‘You’re right, da
rling, thank you. Thank you for your clarity and for your patience. I know I’ve only made things harder with all my niggling, selfish doubts. You have my blessing – of course you do – along with my gratitude. I’ll go away. Yes, I shall invite myself to stay with Valerie Sinclair. She’s been begging me to go down for too long.’

  For all their sakes, they agreed that the visit should take place right away. So, quitting the warmth of the hearthrug, she went to her study to phone Valerie, whose panic at the lack of notice threatened to wreck the entire plan. A gentle reminder of their scratch suppers in the Serengeti reassured her, and Marta arranged to take the train to Lewes the following day. Determined to spend the final night with Edwin, she pulled up a chair beside his bed, leant back on a mound of pillows, and peered into his empty eyes.

  Contemplating a face that was a palimpsest of her past half century, she found herself transported back to an Oxford lecture hall where they sat side by side for a talk on comparative – or, as it was then, primitive – religion. Gathering up his notes at the end, he pocketed her fountain pen: unwittingly it had seemed at the time, but, weighing up her memories, she wondered whether to credit him with more guile. Eager to atone, he invited her, first, to tea in his rooms and, then, to a punt on the Cherwell. All his diffidence disappeared the moment he picked up the pole. It was evident that he had done his homework when he apologised for reading theology.

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  ‘Didn’t the rabbis at Auschwitz put God on trial for crimes against humanity?’

  ‘I’m not a rabbi,’ she said, prompting him to head for the bank, where they exchanged their first kiss. Thirty years later, when he lost his faith in God but elected to stay in the Church, he equated it with the Auschwitz rabbis who, having found God guilty as charged, gazed at the gathering clouds and prepared for evening prayer.

  While never renouncing the humanist creed of her childhood, she had been grateful for his religious belief and, more specifically, his Anglicanism. Like his Englishness, it stood for the triumph of insularity over experience, a sign that he had remained untainted by the forces that had ravaged her world. Which was why she had been hit so hard by his apostasy. Now she had to take heart from the conviction both that their current goodbye would be final and that releasing him was the ultimate act of love.