The Enemy of the Good

by Michael Arditti

  ‘You seduced married men?’

  ‘That was a joke!’

  ‘But you have a faith?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So how can you be what you are and be true to God?’

  ‘I’d turn the question round and ask how anyone with a genuine understanding of God could find it a problem. We’re wrong to think of body and spirit as separate. God gave us the flesh, and the flesh is a route to God. You believe in Genesis. Forgive me if I misquote, but there’s a line in the Creation story: “And God breathed into man the breath of life and man became a living soul.” What does that say to you? To me, it’s very clear: that body and spirit are the same and both come from God. And, for once, science and religion are singing from the same hymn sheet. Just as Einstein showed that energy and matter are one, indeed that matter is simply superconcentrated energy, so Genesis shows that spirit and body are one, that body is simply superconcentrated spirit.’

  ‘Then you think all sexuality is equally valid?’

  ‘No, not all,’ he said, with a pressing need to dissociate his sexuality from Shlomo’s, ‘but any that’s truly loving: between people who enter into it freely: which is in no way exploitative or forced.’

  ‘You mentioned that you have a friend.’

  ‘I have a boyfriend, yes.’

  ‘And you consider it to be the same as a marriage?’

  ‘I do, yes. Though Mike would disagree. He says that our sexuality defines our general attitudes; I say that there are basic attitudes common to us all. You can compare it to the debate between isolationist and assimilationist Jews,’ he said, too pleased with the analogy to worry whether it might cause offence.

  ‘My wife and I have been married for twenty-five years. You wouldn’t think it’d be possible to live with someone that long and still feel a stranger. I told myself that it was the difference between men and women. But it was the difference between me and her.’

  ‘Every relationship involves some kind of compromise.’

  ‘But not a lie… I married too young. I didn’t know any women apart from my mother and my aunts and one sister, who was so much older that she might as well have been an aunt. I had six brothers. I was the last but one. Fine boys. Powerful men.’ Clement felt his own pain bleeding into Shlomo’s. ‘Three of us slept in the same room. Almost on top of each other. But we were clean. You must believe me.’

  ‘Of course! Please don’t upset yourself.’

  ‘I never touched one of them. I never even touched myself. First thing every morning when he came to wake us for schul, my father brought us a bowl of water to wash our hands, in case they’d accidentally touched somewhere shameful overnight. I can’t speak for my brothers, but for me it would have had to have been by accident. Never by design.’

  ‘All boys experiment.’

  ‘All but one. Not with myself or with them. Though sometimes I might have wanted… You’re the first person I’ve ever told, but what does it matter? In a world of shame, every confession is shameful.’

  ‘Some might say the exact opposite.’

  ‘We’d go to the mikvah together. They called us dirty Jews. But tell me, who else in Stamford Hill bathed every day? In my case, though, they were right. A clean skin but a putrid soul.’ Shlomo’s self-loathing threw light on his refusal to shower. ‘I thought that, when I married, my feelings would change. My wife was a good and a beautiful woman. But, to me, she was like seaweed clinging to my legs… No! I tried to love her. But the more I tried, the harder it felt. One day I went to a newsagent’s in Bethnal Green and bought a magazine… one with pictures… pictures of men. The shopkeeper was Bangladeshi. He gave me a look of such scorn. I wanted to shout: “If that’s how you feel, don’t sell it!” Then I realised it was me he was scorning, standing so conspicuous in my suit and tallis. I hurried back to the car with the magazine hot in my hand. I drove to Epping Forest where I sat in a lay-by, leafing through the pages, terrified that each flashing headlight was a police car sent to arrest me – ’

  ‘It’s not illegal.’

  ‘It was to me… Even so, I felt I was where I belonged. The only other time I’ve been so certain was when I stepped off the plane for the first time at Tel Aviv.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘Nothing. For years I did nothing. And then one day… one day I saw my son, my pure undefiled son…’

  ‘Yes?’ Clement said gently.

  ‘No! No more. Nothing more. I should be dead.’ Clement felt the bunks sway as Shlomo ground his head into the pillow. ‘I don’t expect you believe in the Devil.’

  ‘How can I when I believe in God?’

  ‘Then I’m truly doomed. You say that body and spirit are one. And I know you’re trying to help me. But my one hope was that they were separate: that I could escape from my body and all it had done.’

  ‘That’s not to escape from sin but to plunge into it. I can’t speak for Judaism, but there’s a classic Christian distinction between Sin with a capital s and sins with a small one. Sin is a refusal to accept God’s grace. For some of us that can be a refusal to accept the bodies into which God breathed His soul. After all, Christians believe that one man’s body redeemed the world.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘As usual, I twist it round a little. Redeemed, no. Revitalised, yes. And I wouldn’t be so exclusive. Everyone’s body has something of the same potential. Not to change the world, perhaps, but to change another person’s life. Suppose you make love to someone and give them a new sense of purpose or of possibility, let alone fresh hope to someone who’s in despair, wouldn’t it be uniquely restorative? Come to think of it, wouldn’t it be a sort of redemption?’

  ‘So you think making love can make you a better person?’

  ‘I think that’s what the words mean.’ Clement waited for Shlomo to reply, wondering if his silence indicated assent. Then, with a feeling of dread, he watched as a hand slid down from the upper bunk. He slowly reached for it, fighting his revulsion at the moistness of the palm, the hot, heavy flesh of a man who had committed such a heinous crime.

  ‘You did a mitzvah for me before.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you think that you might do another now?’

  Clement shuddered. All his instincts yelled ‘no’. It was hard enough just to hold his hand, the same hand that had pressed down on the helpless and terrified boy. Nevertheless, to reject him would be to renounce his most precious beliefs: that Christ was to be found in us all and, aesthetic considerations aside, he might have modelled his Crucifixion on Shlomo.

  ‘Do you?’ Shlomo asked more urgently.

  ‘Yes,’ Clement said blenching, and he knew that he had never uttered a more costly yet critical ‘yes’ in his life. He had no choice but to agree, being bound by an obligation far greater than that of Mike’s communal rota. It was his chance to show Shlomo a sexuality that was neither brutal nor furtive; for the first time he understood the concept of temple prostitutes. He explained that the virus limited his freedom of action but, as Shlomo lumbered down from the bunk, it was clear that his prime wish was to be held. Clement was overpowered, initially by Shlomo’s smell, then by his bulk, and finally by his need. He felt that his own body was simply a terrain to be charted and conquered. Shlomo’s idea of masculine intimacy owed more to the wrestling ring than to the fireside, with each plea to ‘Relax!’ or ‘Go slower!’ serving to inflame him, giving Clement a painful insight into Daniel’s bruises. He felt Shlomo’s slick belly slapping against his own as he thrust ever harder between his thighs, until he came with such a frenzy of yelps and grunts that Clement jammed his hand over his mouth for fear that he should attract an officer.

  His passion spent, Shlomo gave way to tears. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I’m happy. Or at least I’m not sad.’

  ‘Try to sleep now,’ Clement said, discovering to his dismay that, rather than returning to his own bed, Shlomo took it as an invitation to squeeze in beside him.

  ‘Thank
you so much.’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  ‘But you didn’t…’

  ‘Don’t worry. You did enough for us both. Just promise me one thing: You won’t feel ashamed.’

  ‘I won’t. I don’t.’

  Waking the next morning with a numb left leg and a nagging backache to find himself face to face with a beaming Shlomo, Clement struggled to see his devotion as endearing. Fortunately, Shlomo was so struck with his new sense of himself that he failed to detect the edge with which he urged him to be back in his bunk before Unlock. After submitting to a deep kiss that felt far more intrusive in daylight, he massaged his leg while Shlomo used the lavatory.

  ‘You told me you believed in mitzvahs; now I believe in miracles,’ Shlomo said, as he strutted around the room in his underpants, giving Clement a full view of the pale, pendulous chest with its tufts of hair so thick that they looked like plumage.

  ‘The miracle’s in you,’ Clement replied.

  ‘You’ve no idea how much this means to me. You’re talking to a man who wouldn’t let his children play in the paddling pool on the Sabbath in case their splashing caused a blade of grass to grow. I want to call the Rabbi and tell him what’s happened.’

  ‘Would that be wise?’

  ‘He prayed I’d find my way back to righteousness, and I have.’

  ‘Perhaps you should call your wife first? Ask her to come and visit. See if you can reach some understanding.’

  ‘She hates me, and she has every reason to. But I never gave her aids. There are men in the community… whatever the Rabbi says, they visit prostitutes when their wives are niddah. But they don’t use condoms because it’s against the Law. There are women walking around with putrid guts and no one says anything. At least I didn’t do that to her.’

  ‘May I make one more suggestion?’

  ‘As many as you want.’

  ‘Take a shower. Then you’ll feel as clean outside as in.’ Noting Shlomo’s reluctance and fearing that he might have betrayed himself, he added quickly, ‘Think of it as a mikvah.’

  ‘A mikvah has to have rainwater flowing in.’

  ‘Given the state of the plumbing round here, I doubt that’ll be a problem.’

  ‘Will you come with me?’

  ‘I’m not sure it would be a good idea,’ he replied, determined to quash any hint of dependence. ‘We don’t want to excite gossip.’

  Shlomo agreed and, at the beginning of evening Association, he gathered his towel, shampoo and soap and made his way down the landing. His departure provoked a couple of jeers, which Clement dismissed as he stood at the basin and studied himself in the tarnished mirror, wondering how such vigorous lovemaking could have left so little trace on his skin. He poured himself a cup of coffee from his flask and was settling down with Kipps when Dusty burst into the cell. Clement’s surprise at the breach of etiquette turned to anger when he asked if it were true that Shlomo was taking a shower.

  ‘So what? Have the men on this Unit nothing better to think about? What next? That he’s flossing his teeth?’

  ‘You don’t get it, do you? Why do you think he’s not had a shower in eighteen months?’ Clement maintained his silence and his cell-mate’s confidence. Whatever his past suspicions, he now realised that Shlomo was frightened of being aroused by the naked men. ‘Shall I tell you? It’s because that sick bastard, Ron Castle, and some of the others threatened to kill him.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘Why do you think?’

  ‘But on this wing there’re so many of you.’

  ‘Thanks for that. Yes, but he’s the only Jew. He keeps apart like he thinks he’s better than the rest of us. Something about that got on their tits.’

  ‘So why the showers?’

  ‘That’s where it all happens in this nick. The gym showers for a fuck. The wing showers for a lynching.’

  ‘Do they know he’s there?’

  ‘If they didn’t before, you can bet they do now.’

  ‘So why didn’t he tell me? Why did he agree to go?’

  ‘Maybe he felt strong? Maybe he had enough of hiding or stinking or… who knows? I’m not a fucking trick cyclist! But he’s there.’

  ‘I must get down there.’ Grabbing his towel as a cover, Clement made for the door.

  ‘Who do you think you are: John Wayne? What can you do?’

  ‘Reason with them.’

  ‘This is Bullingdon nick, not Oxford and Cambridge!’

  Clement pushed past Dusty and ran down the landing, to be stopped by Officer Henshaw.

  ‘Where are you going, Granville?’

  ‘Taking a shower, sir.’

  ‘Why are you running?’

  ‘I was afraid there’d be no more hot water.’

  ‘In that case, you’ll just have to have a cold one, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Now run along – slowly! Else I’ll personally stick you under the cold tap for half an hour.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Clement walked on as briskly as possible, conscious of the officer’s eyes on his back. He arrived at the shower room to find his entrance barred by Brian Heald, a burly ex-policeman.

  ‘No one’s allowed in there.’

  ‘I’ve come for a shower.’

  ‘They’re all occupied.’

  ‘I don’t mind sharing.’

  ‘I bet you don’t,’ Heald said with a sneer. ‘Just go back to your pad like a good little bender.’

  ‘You’ve no right to stop me!’

  ‘Oh haven’t I?’ Heald said, with the confidence of one long used to equating his right with the law. Clement grabbed Heald’s arm and prepared for a scuffle, when he was stopped in his tracks by a stifled scream.

  6

  Clement stood with three men from the Unit in a locked yard outside the chapel. He watched while prisoners from the other wings were led past, their wordless hiss the only concession to the setting. Among the crowd he spotted Desmond, who as ever turned away from the scar that he saw as a personal reproach, and Stick, who saluted him with a whoop and a wave that earned their own hoot of derision. When everyone else was safely inside, the officers unlocked a side door and led his three fellows to the back row and Clement himself up to the front where, by special dispensation, he was to sit with his mother, Mike and Carla. He scarcely had time to greet them before the governor stepped forward to thank ‘so many distinguished visitors for gracing the proceedings’ and welcome the Bishop of Buckingham, whose ‘longstanding interest in prison reform makes him uniquely qualified to perform the dedication’. Clement marvelled at the deftness of a man who had made no secret of his hope of securing the Bishop of Oxford or his fury at having to substitute the suffragan.

  The governor resumed his seat and the chaplain announced the first hymn. While the rest of the congregation worshipped the King all glorious above, Clement struggled to keep from staring at the carefully veiled painting over the altar with its echoes of Roxborough. At the end of the second hymn, the bishop crossed to a wobbly lectern to give the address. He began by extolling the redemptive power of art, citing a dried-grass elephant he had been sent from Kenya and a Crazy Gang cabaret he had recently attended in an old peoples’ home, before commending Clement as ‘a man who might well have responded to his incarceration with bitterness and despair but, instead, has taken the opportunity to use his talents for the benefit of his fellow prisoners and the greater glory of God.’

  While grateful for the compliment, Clement was dismayed to find his life repackaged as a Victorian tract. It was a relief when the bishop turned his attention to the painting, albeit a surprise to hear his generous tribute to a ‘Crucifixion for our times’ which, to Clement’s certain knowledge, he had yet to see. He sat with bated breath as the bishop crossed to the altar and, after fumbling with the rope to the unconcealed mirth of several prisoners, finally drew back the curtain. A cry of ‘Bloody hell, it’s Stick!’ broke the tension, while a second one of ‘There’s t
hree of him!’ conveyed the general state of shock. Clement felt both the excitement of the congregation as they grappled with the image and the disappointment of the invited journalists, who had hoped that his Calvary would be a place of scandal as much as pain. He smiled at the thought that the governor might come to regret his prudishness, when he found that nonconformity was less newsworthy than flesh. For his own part, he gave thanks that, although limited resources had required him to work on a smaller canvas than he would have chosen, the three stark figures were clearly visible to every seat in the chapel.

  ‘Congratulations, darling!’ his mother whispered. ‘It’s brilliant.’

  ‘I second that,’ Mike said. ‘What’s more, it’s a new twist on twins.’

  With a start, Clement acknowledged a link to which he had been blind throughout the months at his easel. He could transcend everything but the circumstance of his birth. No only child or younger brother or even fraternal twin would have hit on such an image. The identical yet distinct men, with the shorn one in the middle embracing the fate that his dishevelled companions were straining every muscle to escape, were the embodiment both of his deepest beliefs and of the bond between himself and Mark, the second self who had encouraged him to reach out to all the other selves, making the brotherhood of man an actual as well as a poetic truth.

  With a sense of having come full circle, Clement threw himself into the final hymn, his mother’s surprise at his revivalist fervour offering a timely reminder that he was soon to return to a world where decibels would be sacrificed to decorum. Before pronouncing the blessing, the chaplain invited the guests to join the prisoners and staff for light refreshments at the end of the service, adding shyly that they had been prepared by his wife. The officers watched in impotent fury when, barely waiting for an Amen, the prisoners broke ranks and headed for the food. Clement led his family through the throng, delighted that they were the first to break down the social barriers. Pressed by the chaplain’s wife, he took a rock cake, putting it down in relief when the governor summoned him to meet the bishop.