J

by Howard Jacobson

  ‘I’ll be OK,’ she said, ‘when you’re OK.’

  He stopped his pacing and leaned against the stove. ‘Be careful, for Christ’s sake,’ she warned him.

  ‘What did they see?’ he asked suddenly, as though addressing another matter entirely, as though he had ust strolled into the room with an incidental question in his mind. ‘I’m not asking what they thought – they thought what they’d been taught to think – but what did they see when my hunchbacked grandfather popped his nose out of this cottage to sniff the poisoned air? What did they see when my mother went shopping in her rags? Or when my father crept into the village to sell his candlesticks to the gift shops? Or when you and I, come to that, first went strolling arm in arm through Paradise Valley? What do they see when they see us now?’

  ‘Who’s “they”?’

  He wouldn’t even bother to answer that. She knew who ‘they’ were. ‘They’ were whoever weren’t them. The Ferdies.

  ‘What do we look like to them, is what I’m asking. Vermin?’

  ‘Oh, Kevern!’

  ‘Oh, Kevern what? Oh, Kevern, don’t be so extreme. Do you think I could ever outdo in extremity those who did what they did? But to understand how they could ever do it requires us to see what they saw, or at least to imagine what they saw.’

  ‘Maybe they didn’t see anything. Maybe they still don’t. Has it occurred to you that we just aren’t there for them?’

  ‘Just! That’s a mighty big “just”, Ailinn. I think I’d rather be vermin than “just” not there. And even if you’re right, it still takes some explaining. How do you make a fellow mortal not there? What’s the trick of seeing right through someone? An indifference on that scale is nothing short of apocalyptic – or it is when it comes to getting rid of the thing you don’t see, going to pains to obliterate what isn’t there. But I don’t think you’re right anyway. I think they must see something, the embodiment of a horrible idea, the fleshing out of an evil principle that’s been talked about and written about for too long, mouldy like something that’s crawled out of its own grave.’

  ‘You are in danger,’ she said, ‘of describing the horror you see, not the horror they do.’

  ‘Why should I see horror?’

  ‘Don’t be naive.’

  ‘How am I being naive?’

  ‘When Hendrie raised his hand and told me I had been with them too long, that I didn’t belong there, that he wished they’d never rescued me from the orphanage, I saw what he saw. An outcast ingrate – with big feet – whom no one could possibly love. That’s the way it works.’

  ‘I’m sorry about the feet. I love your feet.’

  He dropped to his knees and thrust his head under the table where her feet were, and kissed them. I could stay here, he thought. Never come back up.

  But he did come back up. That was the grim rule of life, one always came back up . . . until one didn’t.

  She was smiling at least. Gravely, but a smile was still a smile.

  ‘Take my point, Kevern,’ she said.

  ‘I take your point. And I don’t hate myself, if that’s what you’re getting at.’

  ‘That’s not what I’m getting at. I don’t hate myself either. But criticism rubs off. How could it be otherwise? Sometimes the glass through which others look at you tilts and you catch a little of what they see. It’s understandable that you wish you’d made a better impression.’

  ‘Impression! You make it sound like a children’s story – The Little Girl Who Should Have Made a Better Impression. I’m not that little girl, or boy. I don’t crave anybody’s respect – except yours. I’m not trying to understand what people see when they see me – when they see us, Ailinn – because I think I ought to improve my appearance. I’ve no desire to wear a better aspect. I want to understand what they see on the principle that one should know one’s enemies. I want to know what they see so I can hate them better.’

  She fell silent – not bruised by the vehemence of his words but because she wondered whether she was wrong not to feel what he felt. Was it feeble of her to reject resentment, even on behalf of her poor great-grandparents? This queer exhilaration she was experiencing – as though her life could be about to start at last and never mind where she’d been before – was it disloyal? Was Ez sending her on a fool’s errand whose futility was the least of it? Was it wrong? Was it treasonable?

  But no. Whatever she was doing, right, wrong, feeble, gullible, treasonable, Kevern’s way was plain bad. Bad for him. Bad for his mental state. Bad for them. Bad for their future together. Bad. ‘This is unhealthy,’ she said at last.

  ‘It’s a bit late for health.’

  ‘You are also not being honest with yourself. You say you need to understand how others see you, but your curiosity isn’t dispassionate. It isn’t divided equally between those who don’t like you and those who do. You’re only really intrigued by those who don’t.’

  ‘Hardly surprising is it, given what I’ve just discovered, if it’s those who don’t like me I’m interested in right now. My friends I can think about later.’

  Friends? Did he have friends? His recent conversation with Rozenwyn Feigenblat – not a word of which he’d mentioned to Ailinn – came back to him. She saw him as friendless – worse than that, she saw him as courting friendlessness. And now here was Ailinn saying the same. Why was his nature quite so pervious to women?

  ‘It’s not right now I’m talking about,’ she persisted. ‘You’ve always paid more attention to your enemies.’

  ‘Ailinn, I didn’t know I had enemies until five minutes ago.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. Who do you lock your door against? Who are you frightened of being invaded by? You have lived in a world of enemies all your life.’

  ‘You can talk, you and Ahab.’

  She waved Ahab away. ‘Now he’s found me I’ll deal with him,’ she said.

  ‘It’s as easy as that?’

  ‘No. But it’s good to confront him now he’s out of the shadows. It’s good to turn and face him. Look him in the eyes. Your point – know your enemy. OK, Ahab – do your worst. And it turns out he isn’t even called Ahab.’

  ‘No, he’s called Ferdie – who frankly I find more frightening.’

  ‘That’s because you want to go on being frightened. You know no other way.’

  ‘Are you calling me a coward?’

  ‘No. I’m sure it takes bravery to live with fear as you do.’

  ‘That’s patronising. I don’t “bravely” live with fear. It’s not something I choose. I have no choice.’

  ‘You do – you have the choice not to wallow . . .’

  ‘You think this is wallowing?’

  She did, yes she did, but declined to answer. She dropped her head between her fists, and this time beat the cymbals against her ears.

  He wondered if he ought to get dressed. The first squeeze of narrow light was showing out to sea. He wasn’t ready for day, but if it had to come he should go and greet it. The cliffs would be a good place to be, on his bench, side by side with Ailinn, looking out to the dead, consoling sea. It wouldn’t change anything but weather was preferable to the cottage, and the great sea justified his fears. The world was terrifying.

  ‘Will you walk with me?’ he asked, in his gentlest voice. She was right, he knew she was right, morbidity was his nature. So what was new?

  ‘Of course I will,’ she said, putting an arm around him. Not everyone was his enemy, she wanted him to know. But the gesture made them both feel isolated. They had each other, but who else did they have?

  It was only when they were on the bench that she realised he hadn’t double-locked and double-checked that he’d locked the door of his cottage. Had he kicked the Chinese runner? She didn’t think he had. She should have been pleased but she wasn’t. What was he without his rituals?

  There was rain in the air. That squeezed sliver of light had been an illusory promise. Below them, the blowhole was clearing its throat in readiness for a da
y of tumult. A couple of gulls threw themselves like rags into the wind.

  ‘What now?’ he said suddenly.

  ‘Do you want to go back in?’

  ‘No, I meant what are we going to do with the rest of our lives?’

  She knew but couldn’t tell him. ‘We can do whatever you’d like to do,’ she lied.

  ‘Well we can’t just carry on as though nothing’s happened.’

  ‘Why not? How much has changed really?’

  ‘Everything,’ he said. ‘Absolutely everything.’

  ‘You’ll feel differently in a few days. You’ll get back into the swing of things.’

  ‘What swing of things? I never was in the swing of things. I was waiting. Just waiting. I didn’t know what I was waiting to happen or find out, but I now see that the waiting made for a life of sorts.’

  ‘Of sorts! With me? Is that the best you can say of our time together – a life of sorts?’

  He put his arm around her waist but didn’t pull her to him. ‘Not you. Of course not you. I don’t mean that. We are fine. We are wonderful. But the me that isn’t us, that wasn’t us, when all is said and done, before I met you – before the pig auctioneer – that solitary me . . . where do I go with it from here? I waited and I waited, scratching away at bits of wood, and now I know what I was waiting for and it’s . . .’

  ‘It’s what?’

  He didn’t know. Above him the raggedy gulls screamed desolately. Was it all just thwarted greed or did they hate it here as much as he did? He looked up to the sky and cupped his ears as though the birds might tell him what to do with himself from this moment on.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said at last. ‘What it is is nothing. In fact it’s worse than nothing.’

  ‘You could try feeling pride,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Pride. You could decide to wear it as a badge of honour.’

  ‘What do you suggest I do? Change my name back?’

  ‘That’s a black joke, Kevern,’ she said.

  He agreed. ‘The blackest.’

  ‘Then why did you make it?’

  He shrugged. ‘Why did you speak of pride and honour? Where’s the honour, please tell me? You might as well ask this ant which I am about to tread on to view all the previous years of his ant life with pride.’

  ‘It’s not to his shame that you stamp on him.’

  ‘I disagree with you. It is his shame, his fault, for being an ant. We have to take responsibility for our fate. Even an ant. What happens to him is his disgrace.’

  She was shocked to hear him speak like this. It felt like a blasphemy to her. Perhaps he needed to blaspheme. Perhaps that was his way of working the shock of it all out of his system. Nonetheless she couldn’t let his blasphemies go unchecked. ‘You aren’t saying what you really mean,’ she said. ‘You can’t honestly think that your mother’s and father’s life was a disgrace.’

  ‘They were in hiding for the whole of it. Yes, it was a disgrace.’

  ‘And what about those who had nowhere to hide? Their parents and grandparents? Mine?’

  ‘The trodden generations? A disgrace.’

  ‘Then it’s up to you to restore respect.’

  ‘Me? I am the greatest disgrace of all.’

  ii

  Esme Nussbaum sits at the window of her room and watches rain drip from the ferns. Even when it’s not raining anywhere else it rains in Paradise Valley and even when it doesn’t rain in Paradise Valley the ferns go on dripping.

  There is nothing more I can do, she tells herself. It’s no longer in my hands. But it’s in her brain, and with that she wills them on, the harbingers of her bright new equilibrium of hate.

  Senior officials from Ofnow are on the phone to her every day. They want to know how it’s proceeding. The population is still tearing itself apart – why, in her very neck of the woods there has been another brutal murder, a double murder, a policeman and his cat, for God’s sake: what maniac would kill a cat? – so they need good news. She tells them this thing must run its course. Yes, she has other irons in the fire, but this is the best bet and, trust her, she won’t take her eye off it for a moment. But she has to remind them that the complex structure of conflict that was Rome wasn’t built in a day and that there’ll be no immediate visible effect even if all does go well. They don’t agree with her. They think the country will feel a different place the minute it learns that WHAT HAPPENED, IF IT HAPPENED was only, after all, a partial solution. They don’t expect a uniformity of response. After years of saying sorry there’s no knowing how the public will react but, by Esme’s own analysis, the news itself – a few well-judged publicity photographs, the odd teaser interview, not giving too much away, in celebrity and gossip magazines – should begin to restore the necessary balance of societal antagonism. ‘Just give us some tidbits we can definitively leak,’ they tell her, meaning that the wedding, the conception, and the birth can wait. The child of course is crucial – For unto us a child is given – but even the promise of it should suffice for the moment.

  I’m on it, Esme tells them.

  There is one among the importunates whose excitement at the prospect of a cultural rebirth – musicals with wit, reject-rock, hellishly sardonic comedies, an end to ballads – is so intense he can barely express it in coherent sentences. So frequently does he call her that Esme is beginning to wonder whether he isn’t himself one her scouts had missed. I have to tell you, she tells him, that reigniting popular culture is not high among my objectives. He baulks at ‘popular’. The serious theatre, too, needs a shot in the arm, he reminds her. Imagine hearing complex, warring sentences on the stage again. Imagine paradox and bitterness and laceration. Art as endless disputation, bravura blasphemy – Oh, the bliss of it, Ms Nussbaum! Alternatively, imagine the Herzschmerz of a violin and piano sonata, played as only they can play it, as though for the final time. She warns him against premature recidivism. You know about things you shouldn’t know about, she says sternly, and you make unwarrantable assumptions about my politics. I have no desire to restore a status quo from which so many suffered. To regret WHAT HAPPENED is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Something needed to happen, even if what did exceeded decency and proportionality. But nor must we force those who have been providentially spared back into demeaning stereotypical patterns. Herzschmerz indeed! I repeat, I am indifferent to the entertainment implications of this project. Not dismissive, just not engaged. My concern is not bebop but the physics of societal mistrust. You cannot have a one-sided coin. If what I am seeking comes about, we will once again enjoy the stability of knowing who we’re not.

  Her importuner laughs, optimistic despite what she has said to him, imagining he has heard irony. But he is wrong. Irony is not something Esme Nussbaum does.

  It has occurred to her, of course, to worry for Ailinn should things not come about as she intends or, indeed, should it come about too well. What if the years of saying sorry have bred an antagonism even deeper than before? Could Ailinn find herself the object of violent suspicion long before the desired equilibrium has time to take hold?

  But Esme is in the grip of a passion to do good, and all other concerns, including Ailinn’s safety, are subjugated to the more immediate task of bringing that good about.

  There is still some way to go. The problem is Kevern. Not the facts about the bloodline. The facts are fine. So easy of confirmation, in fact, it is a wonder the Cohens were able to go on living for so long in Port Reuben unmolested. The problem is the flakiness. She isn’t any longer sure that he is suitable. She puts this down to poor preparation. Those who have been making him their study have not done their job well. They have not adequately assessed his character. They have been looking through him, or past him, not at him. But it’s her fault too. When she came down to Paradise Valley it was with a view to scrutinising them both. So what went wrong? Ailinn went wrong. Or rather Ailinn went too right. Esme wonders if her vile father had her number after all. Was she indeed a l
esbian? She didn’t think so, but without question she’d found the girl engrossing. And while she was engrossed in the one she failed to keep tabs on the other. Perhaps Kevern had been exercising the same magic. Perhaps he too had blinded those charged exclusively with watching him. Is that their inherited gift, Esme catches herself asking. Are they charmers? Do they beguile? She stills her thoughts. If she’s not careful she’ll be understanding too well why WHAT HAPPENED happened.

  Kevern is not her last throw of the dice. Neither, come to that, is Ailinn. Little by little, fragile shoots of hopefulness have shown themselves in remote corners of the country. Nothing showy, naturally, no salt-rose or topaz, but here and there, a violet by a mossy stone, a dark thing between the shadow and the soul, wasting its sweetness on the desert air. And these will certainly be significant when it comes to procreative negotiations further down the line. But they are not her first choice. Ailinn and Kevern remain her first choice.

  There is another consideration when it comes to Kevern. Esme has given voice to this more than once, in private while watching the ferns drip and when irked by all the problems associated with his character. Who needs the little prick, she has wondered, surprised by her own violence. Expletives came to her often when she lay in her coma, but they haven’t visited her much since.