by Gaby Koppel
“Sorry, my dear,” says Morrie. “No movie.”
“It sounded as though you put my case pretty forcefully, Morrie. But I would have loved to have a go at persuading him myself.”
“Wouldn’t have helped.”
“Why?”
“Why d’you think? Some things you just have to accept.”
“There’s a killer at large, doesn’t he feel in any way moved to do something?”
“He doesn’t think it’s right for his community to enter the spotlight. He says, once you say yes, then it’s open season, and you are in the public eye forever. That’s not how they want to live.”
“So he goes for the Pandora’s Box theory of public relations, as opposed to Andy Warhol’s famous for fifteen minutes idea?”
“Absolutely.”
“He’s pretty switched on, then.”
“Don’t be taken in by the get-up.” Sidney walks me back to the car and says goodbye with a regretful sigh. I thank him, and drive off.
But I’ve no intention of leaving the shtetl. Round the corner, I stop and wait. Then I drive back to the Rabbi’s house and ring the bell again. He doesn’t seem surprised to see me.
“Rabbi, I’m sorry to intrude on you, but I would like you to reconsider your decision.” He nods, says nothing and I suddenly realise that I haven’t heard him speaking English, and I imagine there is every chance he doesn’t.
“Please put yourself in the position of the mother,” I say, speaking slowly and enunciating each word. “Can any of us imagine how it must be to lose a child – let alone like this? For her sake and the sake of the community, please reconsider your decision.”
He looks at me, and holds his arm out, inviting me to enter the house. It’s taken thirty seconds for me to get further with this than Morrie managed. A polished parquet floor sweeps along the hallway and into the front room. Along one wall is an ornate glass cabinet, full of ceremonial silver cups, plates and candlesticks. The Rabbi calls something up the stairs, and after a few moments a girl of about nineteen appears, book in hand. She sits on a chair in the corner and starts reading, without even looking at me.
The Rabbi gestures to a chair, so I sit. He remains on his feet, the tip of his beard level with the top of my head.
“Thank you for agreeing to talk to me,” I say. I still haven’t heard him utter a word of English, so I back pedal on the language, trying to select basic vocabulary. “If – you – will – think – again – about – letting – us – make – a – film, I am – sure – you – will – not – ” I scrub the word regret “ – be sorry.” He looks at me, still silent, so I add, “Television – is – a – very – powerful – er, medium.” OK, medium breaks the simple vocab rule, but I can’t think of an easier alternative. Rabbi Stern takes a few paces along the room with his head down, as if thinking, then turns towards me.
“OK, young lady, let’s make one thing absolutely clear.” His accent is as New York as pastrami on rye. “We don’t need any lectures about the efficacy of TV. Believe me, we know all about TV and all the great wonders it has to offer.”
“Then,” I say, “you will realise that it may be your best bet for finding the guy who killed Bruchi Friedmann.”
“And of course, you have no vested interest whatsoever in suggesting that?”
“If you want to see figures for clear-up rates, following appeals on The Crime Programme, I can bring them over.”
“You prove any damn thing you like with statistics. And you are making one hell of a big assumption anyway. Finding the guy who did it may not be my top priority. We’ve already got some of your colleagues from the nation’s least attractive publications crawling round the area, and that is more than enough.”
“Statistically speaking, there’s always the risk he’ll offend again.”
“Here? In the same place?”
“Not necessarily.”
“So why should I care?”
“Don’t you?”
“I look after my community. If I wanted to represent the nation, I’d stand for prime minister.”
“How about justice for the Friedmann family? Isn’t that a Jewish principle?”
“Look, one of the most loathsome clichés about Jewish justice is all that ‘an eye for an eye’ stuff. People think we’re a load of religious fanatics hell bent on revenge. Sorry to disappoint.”
“So you’d rather a dangerous man stay out there?”
“You talk as though there’s nobody else out there fighting the forces of evil. As a law-abiding citizen of this country, which I have been for twenty years, it may surprise you to know I am willing to trust the Metropolitan Police to do their best on our behalf.”
Chapter 7
It’s six o’clock by the time I leave Stamford Hill. I’ve achieved nothing and can’t bear to think what’s waiting for me at home. Outside the flat, I sit in the car listening to the end of the Six O’Clock News. I shuffle around the jumbled mess inside my handbag, looking for my keys but find my phone instead. As it comes back on, the voicemail icon flashes at me. One message.
“Hi Liz, it’s Millie here. Sarah’s wondering where you are. You know you were supposed to be here for a meeting with her and Bill about your story at four o’clock. It’s four thirty. And I think you should know that Sarah’s – umm – a bit—” Beep. It cuts out. Fill in the gap. Now let me guess. Sarah’s a bit – delighted? Thrilled? I’m in the shit again, empty-handed and way too tired to handle the bollocking she’s lining up for me. As I’m going into the flat, I quick-dial through to Dave.
“Hi,” I say. “What are you doing?”
“Keeping a low profile so that I don’t upset your darling Mutti while she’s adjusting to the trauma of me joining the family.”
“You don’t have to, you know. You could come round.”
“Mmm. Yeah, or I could stay here reading a medical text book. Then next time I bump into your parents I could pretend the photography thing’s just a hobby. I’m actually a doctor. I could even perform circumcision on myself, in a hopeless bid to convince her I’m the son-in-law of her dreams.”
“Very funny.”
“I’m a changeling – a Jewish boy brought up by unwitting Christian parents. A kind of Moses for nos jours, just trying to liberate my inner medic.”
“I’m glad you find it funny.”
“But Elizabeth, I’m pining for you. What about abandoning your precious Mutti tonight? Pop round here for an illicit bacon sandwich.”
“As it happens, my mother would have no objections to a bacon sandwich, so strictly speaking, it wouldn’t be illicit.”
“So I’m less acceptable to your Jewish parents than a bacon sandwich.”
“Welcome to the family. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Babe, take pity on me. Pop round here for a licit bacon sandwich with your illicit boyfriend.”
“Fiancé, you mean.”
“How could I forget, my gorgeous bride?”
“Love you, speak tomorrow, byeee.” I open the door of the flat, bracing myself for the stink of cigarette smoke. I sniff. I take a deep breath through the nose. The only unusual smell I can detect is floral.
And then I see why. My black lacquer dining table has been covered by a lacy cloth of man-made fibre. In its centre is a cut-glass vase containing a bunch of carnations and dahlias in violent, unnatural shades of pink, yellow and blue. The mantlepiece has been adorned with a selection of what I can only call modernist bric-a-brac, and the back and arms of my leather sofa are sporting jolly, crocheted white antimacassars which Mutti wouldn’t dream of having in her own home, so she must think my taste in decor calls for desperate measures. The minimalist front room has been transformed.
Mutti comes out of the kitchen, wearing a frilly gingham apron and a look of supreme self-satisfaction. She is polishing a wine glass.
“Good day at work, dahhlink?” she says.
“Could have been better,” I reply. “And it looks as though we’ve had
a visit from the Changing Rooms team. Don’t tell me – Carol Smillie’s hiding in the bedroom.”
“Is better, though?”
“More – colourful, certainly,” I concede.
In the kitchen there are dishes everywhere – a starter of Russian eggs, a vat of goulash, a pan of parsley potatoes glistening with butter, a technicolour salad, and a massive gateau. My mother’s food obsession covers every spare bit of surface. In a flash the fat child and anorexic teenager inside me are doing battle, one clingy and the other desperate to escape. The mean-spirited adolescent wins. Though I can see Mutti’s desperate for me to ooh and ahh over her ridiculous creations, I say: “I’m going to have a shower,” and turn my back.
The steaming jet of water feels as if it’s scouring out the resentment. Mutti’s trying very hard to please me. I towel myself dry with more than the usual vigour, as if I can pummel my fury into gratitude. That doesn’t work, but as I’m pulling on some clean jeans I realise I haven’t eaten all day. I’m starving. On the pretext of admiring the spread, I stand near to Mutti and sniff her breath. She’s sober. Relief and affection well up inside me.
When she serves dinner I eat as I used to do before I began hating her. The starter is a familiar concoction of diced vegetables laced together with lashings of mayonnaise and served with boiled eggs. As if there’s not nearly enough saturated fat in it already, the yolks have been removed, and mashed up with butter. The yellow paste has then been piped back into the halved whites, with a pinch of paprika powder on top for decoration. The effect is baroque, and maybe it was aesthetics that made this one of my grandmother’s most beloved dishes. I thought I’d reached my lifetime limit of Russian eggs after forcing them down every Sunday for fifteen years. Until now. I hoover my plate and look round for the next course.
British people think they know what goulash is. It’s a stew seasoned with a teaspoon of paprika and served with rice. Serious foodies give a knowing smile at such lack of sophistication. Of course, they say, everybody knows that the “gulyás” is actually a soup. It is the staple of the Magyar tribesmen, who have inhabited the plains of the Puszta for centuries. My mother’s goulash is no soup.
Like so many other bourgeois refugees who grew up with a household full of servants, she and my grandmother had to teach themselves to recreate their most beloved Magyar dishes in chilly Britain. Back then it took resourcefulness to find the key ingredients in a small provincial town like Cardiff. You might as well have asked for frankincense and myrrh at the local grocers as requesting paprika powder and sour cream. But these were women who had survived the Nazis, and ‘not available’ just wasn’t part of their lexicon.
By now, Mutti has had time to refine the dish to the point of perfection. Hearty chunks of pork and slices of smoked sausage have been steeped in a dense, meaty broth, thickened with flour and seasoned with a generous amount of paprika. A handful of caraway seeds give another, lighter dimension to the symphony of flavours that is building. A large jar of sauerkraut is stirred into the rich, red sauce. By itself, sauerkraut is a sad thing. Limp, acidic cabbage, lacking in soul. But it gives heart to my mother’s Szegedin Goulash, soaking up the juices and melting them together. The final ingredient and the most magical is the sour cream. It transforms something prosaic into poetry, endowed with an exquisite soft sharpness.
This is the food I’ll dream of when I’m dying. A yielding, flavoursome plateful. As full of contradictions and complexities as my mother herself. I don’t compliment the food, as I know I should. But my clean plate and full stomach speak for themselves. Mutti is beaming.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she says as we put our plates away, “but I’ve invited my old friend Liesl for kaffee und kuchen after dinner. I nod. By now I’ve eaten so much that I’m past caring.
At eight o’clock on the dot the bell rings. Mutti goes to the door and I hear the smack of hearty Mittel European kissing, and exclamations of, “Darhhlink, how are you?” Liesl is a grande dame of Viennese provenance, her hair a golden dome fortified with a whole can of Elnett. She sweeps into the room, followed by her son, a gawky young man in a sports jacket, with trousers that stop two inches above his shoes. I’ve eaten so much that I believe her when she says he has come because she’s afraid of driving in the dark.
Something strange happens when you indulge yourself with rich food. Instead of satisfying your craving, you want more and more. The Hungarian half of my subconscious will not be content until the final part of the meal has been served. I’ve seen a cake in the kitchen, stacked with creamy layers of chocolate cream. I’m so desperate for it I am even willing to overlook the ridiculous silver paper doily that it’s sitting on.
As I come back into the room, there’s a pause in the conversation. I hand round generous slices, each topped with a mountain peak of schlagsahne.
“So, Elizabett, your mother tells me that you verk in television.”
“Yes,” I say, “and what do you do, Michael?” He stares at the carpet and mutters something. “Sorry,” I say, “I didn’t quite catch that.” Michael’s eyes bore into the carpet with such intent that I wonder if he’s spotted a stain.
“I work in a pathology lab.”
“Oh that must be interesting. What exactly do you do there?” He nods at the carpet, and a blotchy redness starts spreading up his neck.
“We analyse slides, for signs of malignancy.”
“And do you have to train a long time for that kind of thing?”
“Just the usual six years.”
“Six years, goodness, that’s the same as a…”
“Yes?” I look at my mother. She looks back, a picture of innocence.
“So, you are a fully qualified, medical doctor?”
“Oh yes, sorry, didn’t I make that clear?”
“I understand. I understand everything.”
“Oh really, have you worked in a lab?”
“Only the laboratory of life.” I pause. “And let me guess, Michael, you are probably single?”
When the cake has eaten and our visitors are making their way back to Stanmore, I turn to Mutti.
“I know you aren’t that mad about Dave, but it’s too late to start introducing me to eligible bachelors.”
“Why ever not?”
“What do you mean why not? Because I am engaged to be married.”
“So?”
“You know perfectly well that one fiancé is the maximum number one can have. There is no vacancy.”
“There’s nothing wrong with having two fiancés. I had two for a considerable period. It was very chic.”
“Did the two men involved know what was going on?”
“Of course not. A woman should have secrets. It adds to her mystique.”
“But that’s wrong. It may not be illegal, but it’s deceitful and immoral. It’s verging on bigamy.”
“A young girl is permitted to be fickle. You use your charm later to extricate yourself.”
“I’m not a young girl. I’ll be forty in a few years. And anyway, if I was prepared to two-time Dave, it wouldn’t be in favour of an autistic mummy’s boy in a tweed jacket. Even if he is legally entitled to carry a stethoscope.”
“You are right, he wasn’t at all suitable. Difficult to believe this klutz is actually a doctor. I’m sure Valentina will find somebody more appropriate.”
“I’ve already got somebody more appropriate.” I glare at her. She looks suitably apologetic. I get up to clear the plates when I realise.
“And who, may I ask, is Valentina?”
“She’s – a businesswoman.”
“I get it. What did you say her name was?”
I find my handbag and pull out the now very crumpled copy of the Jewish News. In the small ads at the back, under Social and Personal, there it is: Valentina Fink Introductions.
“This Valentina?”
Mutti nods.
“And how much does Valentina charge for these ‘Introductions’?”
“It was
n’t that much, considering.”
“Wasn’t? You mean you’ve already paid this charlatan some money? What will Daddy think? You’re broke as it is, and now you are wasting money you don’t have on a hopeless attempt to get me hitched to what you imagine is a nice Jewish boy.”
“Dahhlink, I’m just trying to give you options.”
Chapter 8
When I wake up the following day, my stomach is still aching as though it’s gone five rounds with Barry McGuigan. Stumbling towards the kitchen, I see the spare room door is open, the bed has been made. No sign of Mutti, but the Italian espresso pot is on the hob, and it’s hot. Clean dishes are piled up on the work surface. While I’m waiting for the kettle to boil, I look into the lounge. No sign. I take my mug into the hallway, and open the front door. There she is, smoking a cigarette, drinking coffee, watching the traffic go past. A shaft of early morning sunshine catches the steps.
Leaving the front door on the latch, I tuck my dressing gown under me and sit on the top stair.
“So, what are you planning to do today, then?”