‘I do not need to stand for this kind of treatment!’ I said. ‘And as for a donation, young man, you can forget about that!’
He did not try to stop me. In fact I didn’t think he would. I marched out of there and closed the door and walked back down to the Strand and round the corner, never once looking back, not doubting that he’d be following, if only for a little while. If only to make sure that I was gone.
Yes, I liked Mr Eric Goodman, for my purposes. I liked him very much indeed.
It was surprisingly uncomfortable for Wolfson the Jew to walk the streets of London that day. Wolf realised that for all of his recent association with Mosley, he had simply not paid enough attention to the forthcoming elections. The signs for Mosley’s campaign were everywhere, his aristocratic face staring down from billboards and posters glued to the ancient walls, and his men, the Blackshirts stood and glared at passers-by like truant schoolboys.
‘Enough is Enough!’ screamed their signs. ‘Fight, Fight, and Fight Again!’ – ‘Stop the Open Door Policy!’ – ‘Say No to Mass Immigration!’ – ‘Vote BU: Putting Britain First’ – ‘Mosely for Prime Minister’ – and so on and so forth.
Wolf’s strawmen had been the Jews; for Mosley, it was the European refugees from now-communist Germany who must serve – and that included Wolf himself.
It was an uncomfortable realisation.
Equipped with a Thermos of hot herbal tea, and cheese-and-tomato sandwiches, and his raincoat and fedora, he returned two hours later, near closing time, to the little narrow lane off the Strand; and there found himself a sheltered space in a doorway and there he stood, unobtrusively, and sipped his tea, and ate his sandwiches, and watched the door of the Jewish Territorialist Organisation.
At 5.30 in the afternoon the comatose secretary emerged, wrapped up like a large ham, and made her way down to the bus stop. It was already very dark and it had been raining intermittently and dark wet patches covered the pavements.
At 6.30 on the dot the door of the ITO offices opened and Eric Goodman emerged, huddled in a coat, and shut and locked the door. He looked from side to side but apart from a handful of theatregoers lost on the way to the Strand there was no one on the lane. Wolf’s Thermos was still half-full but so was his bladder and he needed to pee. His leg ached from the old wound. Goodman turned right and Wolf followed him. Goodman went through Covent Garden and Wolf hobbled after.
They passed the Royal Opera House and came finally to Dryden Street, where Goodman entered a small cafe of the sort reactionaries and penniless artists frequented; that is to say, it was a dive. Wolf waited some moments, adjusted his hat and entered. The place was crowded and noisy, the clientele boisterous and young. Goodman was sitting in a corner with his back to the door. He was not alone. Wolf went into the small water closet to urinate and stared in horror at his circumcised penis before tucking it away again. He went back into the cafe and got himself a fruit juice, and sat two tables away from Goodman. He tried to listen to their conversation but they spoke in low voices. The other man was Goodman’s age but there was something hard about him, in his eyes and the shape of his mouth, in the way he held himself. He sat with his back to the wall. Wolf had the impression he was not the kind of man to ever leave his back exposed.
The conversations swelled around Wolf.
‘The situation in Europe – my brother says—’
‘Those damned Fascists!’
‘Revolution by peaceful means. The British people are too sensible to give in to a charlatan like Mosley—’
‘—understudy for Hamlet at the Theatre Royal, the bastard—’
‘Yes, do you like it? A wonderful artist, utterly wonderful—’
‘Only a matter of time before war is declared, the Americans—’
‘I blame the French, myself.’
‘Utterly divine cakes—’
‘Playing Rosenkrantz – well, a job’s a job, you know what they say—’
‘I didn’t like the look of him, is what I’m saying, Bitker.’
‘Listen to me, Goodman! You’re supposed to keep a clean front—’
Wolf, ears perked, trying to isolate snatches of conversation.
‘A shamus, a shamus or a copper is what he seemed to me, Bitker—’
‘You simply must see Gaslight at the—’
‘The revolution—’
‘Wolfson? But his papers were kosher?’
‘Kosher like a bagel.’
‘You let me know if he comes again, Goodman. Do you understand—’
‘My publisher? Stanley Unwin and C—’
‘Nothing can interrupt the plans, Goodman, do you understand!’
Wolf was hunched low but he saw the other man, the one he thought Goodman had called Bitker, shove his chair back, leap to his feet and leave the cafe. He was a big man, this Bitker. Wolf got up and followed.
The man strode across Long Acre. He was wary of a tail: twice Wolf saw him check reflections in shop windows, but Wolf was an anonymous face amongst others and the man did not see him. He hopped on a bus and Wolf climbed aboard too. The bus went down Holborn and Newgate and past St Paul’s. The man Bitker got off there and Wolf did too. It had begun to rain again. Somewhere in the distance he could hear a wireless playing Judy Garland’s ‘Over the Rainbow’. Wolf had seen the film but, had he been the one swept up to the magical land of Oz, he would have raised an army of flying monkeys, stuck the witches in a concentration camp, razed the Emerald City to the ground and executed the wizard for communist sympathies, being a Jew, a homosexual, intellectually retarded, or all of the above.
He did like the tune, though.
He followed Bitker in the dark through the City, abandoned to the night at this hour. The streets were taken up by the homeless and the criminal, and police presence was light. Outside the Bank of England Wolf saw a group of protesters, their faces obscured by scarves, setting alight a vast straw figure dressed in the Blackshirts’ uniform. Policemen did arrive then, and the protesters threw bottles and stones and the policemen cursed and advanced on them with their clubs and Wolf walked on, following the elusive Bitker.
The night made Wolf uncomfortable. It was filled with grotesque human shapes, shambling through the narrow streets, their feet bare in the cold or wrapped in hastily torn bandages: some were missing limbs, others had scars from torture or acid, others still carried sharp implements the better to remove a man’s valuables or life. All were beggars, the lowest of men, the lost, those who had despaired; refugees, unwanted, undesired, holding on to life tenaciously, hungrily, like beasts. They frightened Wolf, he saw himself bared, ugly in the mirror of their suffering.
Yet Bitker navigated these selfsame streets with ease and Wolf in his wake was left unharmed. They came shortly to Threadneedle Street and descended a flight of stairs to the door of a basement flat. After looking from side to side but missing Wolf again, Bitker knocked three times and waited. Presently the door was opened and light spilled out, illuminating a plain-faced Jewess in a flower-patterned dress. Bitker disappeared inside and the door closed and Wolf was left outside in the darkness. He crouched on the stairs and peered through the lace curtains.
* * *
The watcher in the dark, too, was watching, but this time he could no longer control the eagerness. He was watching the whores and had missed the detective’s whereabouts and only knew that the detective wasn’t there. Earlier he had fiddled with the cheap lock on the door and opened it and gone up the stairs and into the detective’s office and he sat behind Wolf’s desk. It felt so good to be sitting there. It felt so right.
The detective was so stubborn, he thought. It was because the man had lost a part of himself after the Fall, and was unable to get it back. It was pitiful, watching him hobble along, this once-great man, this leader of men, now like a decommissioned soldier, blinded by gas, a beggarman, a sleepwalker almost. The watcher in the dark wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, shake him so hard and shout, Wake up! Wake
up, you daft old fool! We need you! but no sound emerged and the detective wasn’t there and hadn’t been listening so far, but by God the watcher was going to get his attention. You did not just abandon a destiny.
Tonight. Soon. He could feel the need and the desire and he knew he could not put it off any longer, he needed … he shuddered in the chair and got up, moved softly around the room, not touching anything, just … feeling it. Was this what it was like to have been in his presence, before? In his office with men always coming and going and the sound of hobnailed boots on hard floors, the rustle of stiff leather, the whisper of flags like silk, the smell and taste of power so strong it suffused the very air and changed all who came into contact with it?
He left the office regretfully, softly, and picked Wolf’s bedsit’s lock. Once the door was open he closed his eyes for a long moment and stood there, and when he opened them again it was as though the room was transformed and for just a moment he was standing in Wolf’s old bedroom, in the Berlin residence, and the swastika flags were moving in the breeze, and outside the chauffeur was polishing the official car. For a moment he pictured a young blonde woman in the bed … she opened her eyes and smiled sleepily, her eyes filled with slowly fading dreams. Her long blonde hair was the colour of the sun and her skin was white as snow, but hot, so hot … the watcher was so erect just standing there and he moved with a great effort, looking at Wolf’s books, Wolf’s toilette, his meagre possessions: his razor, his soap, his threadbare blanket and the books, all those books everywhere. The watcher stood over the sink, imagining Wolf brushing his teeth, shaving his cheeks, washing his hands. The watcher looked in the mirror but it was only his own ordinary face staring back at him and that broke the spell. He left and locked the door behind him and went back down to Berwick Street. He had work to do, so much work.
Wolf’s Diary, 9th November 1939 – contd.
It was an ordinary basement flat, sparsely furnished with heavy Victorian high-backed chairs and two tables joined together in the middle of the room, for all that their heights didn’t entirely match. A flower-patterned cloth covered the tables. Sitting in the chairs were five men and, entering the room, was the plain-faced Jewess. Bitker trailed behind her.
I’d not seen such an assembly of reprobates since the camp. They were a shifty lot, swarthy and hairy like the untermenschen Jews that they were. They sat with no decorum, in their white undershirts, and hairy arms on the table, all but one, and all but one smoking. The ashtrays were filled to overflowing with what the English call ‘fags’. I was glad I was outside in the cold clean air. The beasts had not even opened a window. It must have been like an oven in there. Of the five men one was a skinny lad with smooth cheeks and a face like a hooked fish and he wore an oversized shirt with sleeves that covered his wrists. He reminded me of someone but I couldn’t think of whom.
The men were talking animatedly but stopped abruptly when Bitker entered. They all stood up and shook his hand and one or two of them slapped him on the back
I heard his name, Bitker, once or twice but could not hear the discussion, which took place in low voices. The Jewess disappeared and reappeared later with a large tray of tea things. I became convinced this was, indeed, a Palestinian terror group, but could they be the ones behind the assassination attempts on Mosley? I pressed closer to the window, trying to hear, when I felt more than saw a dark shape drop down from the windowsill of the flat above. It meowed at me and, startled, I banged my head against the window.
The voices inside ceased at once. A moment later the lights went out. I pushed the cat away and it hissed at me. I kicked it, feeling a savage satisfaction even as I could hear running feet and the door to the conspirators’ flat crashing open.
I ran.
They moved like professionals. They didn’t shout, didn’t curse as they chased me. They ran quietly and swiftly and with violent determination. My lungs burned and my leg throbbed with old pain and I fled for my life, down narrow alleyways, trying to lose them, my traitor leg hurting and my chest heaving until I thought I would be sick, and as I ran I caught sight of a sign and realised I was on Old Jewry. For a moment I thought I’d lost them.
The God damned cat tripped me up.
It came out of nowhere, streaked between my feet like a spirit of animal vengeance, screeching hideously. I tripped and fell, hard, catching myself with the palms of my hands. I felt skin tear and my knee crack, sending a shudder of fresh pain up my body and I cried out: I could not help it.
In moments they were on me and I could smell the bloodlust on their unwashed bodies. I curled into a ball, trying to protect my head and my genitals as they kicked me.
I think they were shouting questions at me, and the foreigner, Bitker, was ordering them to stop but they had lost discipline. I almost prayed, remembering the old words, my mother’s and the priest’s. To die like this! Ignobly in the Old Jewry at the hands of the selfsame Jews who once before were evicted out of England. It was too much to bear.
The sound of a whistle cut through the night and my pain. The kicking, miraculously, stopped. I heard running feet and saw the bouncing light of several torch beams. ‘Jews! They’re Jews!’ came the cry.
I opened my eyes. I saw a group of young Blackshirts rushing towards the Palestinian terrorists. ‘Fascist pigs!’ someone yelled. I saw the blade of a knife gleam but who held it I wasn’t, afterwards, sure. In the uncertain light of the torches I saw the face of the smooth-cheeked youth in profile and for a moment I almost laughed, for it was no man at all, it was a woman!
‘Hello, Judith,’ I whispered, softly.
Then all hell, as they say, broke loose. The two groups, the Jews and the Blackshirts, went at each other. I heard punching, grunting, saw a Jew raise a brick and smash it into a Blackshirt’s head, caving in his skull. I saw a Blackshirt choking a Jew by the throat, his thumbs driving into the other man’s windpipe. I saw the God damned cat standing a foot to my left, looking at me with a smirk on its dumb animal face. I crawled away, though every movement hurt. In moments they were behind me. In the darkness and the fight no one saw me go but the cat.
I straightened up, eventually. I stood and then walked, away from that awful place. I caught a bus and sat on the upper deck. On my swollen lips, I tasted blood.
‘Why are you all on your own, a good-looking boy like you?’
The fat whore leered at him. She was rouged with cheap make-up over a too-pale face. Her jowls shook with her smile. Her teeth were small and uneven. Her tongue was red and she stuck it out at the watcher in the dark. ‘You want to fuck old Gerta?’ she said. ‘You want old Gerta to suck your baby cock?’
Her bosoms were immense. She grabbed her breasts from below and shook them at him, and the pale white flesh wobbled like waves on a sea. The other whores were busy. The street was quiet. The watcher in the dark was ready. His hand closed on the hilt of the knife, the shiny, shiny knife. ‘Come here,’ Gerta said. She pulled him by the hand and forced his head between the twin mounds of her breasts. ‘Give Aunty a kiss!’
She was strong; stronger than he had guessed. She released him and he could breathe again. Her hand tested him down below and she leered again, knowingly. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.
She did not lead him to the alleyway where he had done the other. The girls did not use it any more. She led him somewhere else, past the dirty bookstore and a florist and a haberdashery and a cafe run by émigré Italians, all shut now, and pushed him against the wall near the rubbish bins where no one could see them. His heart beat fast and wild. She raised up her voluminous skirts, revealing pink fleshy thighs and a dark unruly bush of pubic hair. ‘No, what are you doing,’ he tried to say, ‘no, not like that,’ and he tried to struggle with her, then, but she was having none of it, she held his neck in a hug that was all but a chokehold, and with her other hand she pulled down his pants and took his stiff cock in her hand and before he even knew what was happening she had guided him inside her, squeezing his buttocks roughly as she p
ulled him in.
She seemed oblivious to him then. Her eyes were half closed and her lips parted and she made strange animalistic sounds, grinding him against her, over and over. The watcher had never done it before and he felt sick, sick being inside of this grotesque old creature, and only the thought of the knife kept him going until at last Gerta gave a shuddering little laugh and abruptly released him, pushing him off her. She looked down at his now-flaccid member, flopping there in the dark, and gave a little laugh again, contemptuously.
He pulled up his trousers quickly. She was still looking at him but then her eyes changed: when she saw the knife.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing—’ she said, or began to. He lashed out at her with the knife but she raised her arm and the knife grazed her but he had obviously missed his target. ‘You little fuck hole!’ she said. She sounded outraged more than scared.
‘You disgusting whore!’ He stabbed with the knife, again. They were so close to each other, it was as if they were making love, still. She grabbed him, pulled him close and then the knife was sticking out of the right side of her chest and she stared at him in surprise, or shock, clutching him to her, her blood staining the front of the watcher’s shirt.
‘Just die!’ the watcher pleaded.
Instead, Gerta kneed him in the balls.
The watcher collapsed. He was still holding the knife. It pulled out of Gerta’s chest and it emerged with a sickening, sucking sound. Gerta gasped, clutching her hands to the wound. There was very little blood.
A Man Lies Dreaming Page 16