Haffner! So sure that he was charming! So intent on making conversation – even though, of course, Viko was not interested in his anecdotes about Communism. He didn’t care about Haffner’s urbane distaste for all the politics.
The anecdote, therefore, did not receive the applause which Haffner thought it was due. A little shocked, perhaps, he tried another conclusion.
That, said Haffner, was the best he could say for Communism. But before Haffner could gratify himself with a murmured smile – as he remembered Cesare ruefully saying that the whole adventure had at least produced one benefit, because his wife, having found out, had finally made him a free man – Haffner felt a moment of alarm. It felt to Haffner’s worried senses that Viko might be going too far.
The range of Haffner’s body available to massage seemed to be becoming more expansive.
4
Haffner was lying on his stomach: a warm towel over his back. He was naked. At first, he had toyed with the idea of wearing the briefs he usually swam in. But then had thought that really he should not care. They were hardly the most comfortable of items. The important thing, he always thought, was a comprehensive massage. As if he needed to be worried about his modesty! No, not here, not with a man.
But now, he felt Viko let his hands splay and drift with the oil further up his thighs. At first, as Haffner chatted, he had interpreted this as invigorating. Then he began to wonder. But he was too confused to make a sign, to tense his thigh muscles in the ordinary mute gesture of irritation. He could not be sure how European this was – how much to do with the health spa, and how much to do with something else entirely.
His penis was trapped there, under his thigh, its squashed head protruding under his testicles.
And then he felt the man’s hand flicker on to the head of his penis. He really could not be sure if this were still an accident. These accidents, felt Haffner, were becoming so much less accidental than he had first imagined.
5
He was rarely successful in his active search for what he considered to be bohemian. Whenever Haffer metamorphosed into the bohemian, it tended to be the result of someone else’s choice. He strayed into it. He had understood the streets in Soho – but he had never felt quite at home on Wardour Street, or Frith Street. He went to the French House sometimes. But not the Colony Room, not the Gargoyle Club. Never had the wisecracking hostess Muriel Belcher eyed him from behind the bar, admiringly, as he went promiscuous with a male prostitute who came from the satellite towns around Glasgow. Nor had he drunk with Francis Bacon, vomiting into the gutter, each supporting the other’s bent body, wildly applauding.
No, thought Haffner: bohemia, when it came to Haffner, always came in such strangely bourgeois costumes: a moustached man in a tracksuit, say, surrounded by candles.
This confusion was one instinct which he had inherited from Papa. Early on in Haffner’s career, in Haffner’s marriage, they had sat in the rose garden, in the pale sunshine, a police siren tumescing and detumescing in the background, and Papa had expounded on life. The thing was, a man could either waste his life or live his life. And in the end it was better to live it than to waste it. Did he understand this? Haffner answered that he thought he did. But what was wasting, and what was living? Was it Livia, or not Livia? A marriage, or not a marriage? It was hardly as if Papa had been an expert in distinguishing the living from the wasting – in knowing what was a place of safety, and what was a place of harm. In Haffner’s opinion, these terms had a habit of turning themselves upside down. He seemed isolated in this uncertainty. The only other person who shared his bewilderment, in the end, was Livia herself. More often, it led to arguments like the one which had occurred the day of Livia’s funeral: sitting in his kitchen with his daughter and her husband, Esmond.
He was, Esther told him, simply impossible. Haffner tried to disagree. She interrupted him. He was impossible. Like an infant. Haffner did not try to disagree.
He cared for nothing, said Esther. And angrily Haffner had replied that in fact it was he, her father, who was the only person in this family to think about other people. Yes, let him speak.
No one was more conceited than Haffner, said his daughter. No one cared more about himself. Did he know what Mama used to say? She had married a Greek god, and had left a Roman emperor. A monster of ego.
—Humble! roared Haffner. I am the humblest person I know.
No one could think what to say next. The chutzpah of it dazzled them. So no one spoke. Haffner simply glared at Esmond. Esmond silently glared back.
It amazed him, thought Haffner, how vanquished this man was: the absolute son-in-law.
Esmond wore the steel rectangular spectacles sported by fundamentalist spokesmen and the vice presidents of Midwestern software companies; but Esmond was neither a vice president nor a fundamentalist.
He admired Esmond for only one thing, did Haffner: his hair. This, he conceded, was splendid – the way it flowed and oozed, a miracle of liquidity. But nothing else. Not the liberal moral certainties; nor the obsession with football borrowed from the newspapers. Yet this was the man who had made Haffner’s daughter into a meek provider: who had seduced her into the temptations of Orthodoxy. This was the man who had made his grandson rabbinical.
He still saw no reason, said Esmond, why that other woman should have presumed to come. Barbra, Haffner interrupted, was a very dear friend. Esmond ignored this statement. If that was what Haffner wanted, then he was welcome to continue this friendship, he said. He looked at Esther. She was arranging the cutlery in front of her – which had been laid for a breakfast no one, now, except Haffner, would eat: the rustic basket of pains au chocolat before him, the snorting coffee machine on the counter behind him. But there was no reason, Esmond said, for them to have to witness this. He saw no reason why they should have to deal with Haffner’s, with his – but Esmond had no word for Haffner’s delinquency.
And for a moment, Haffner, on his massage bed, felt a rare tenderness for Esmond. He understood the difficulty – since this was how Haffner had felt too, when trying to contemplate the moral life of Papa.
History, thought Haffner, was simply a playground of repetition. It really did amaze him how limited were its motifs.
Hurt as Haffner was by Papa’s reckless behaviour, with the women, and the money, he tried to understand his impulses. Papa was terrified of waste. It was the only lesson he had ever learned; the only one he could ever impart. Haffner thought he understood, therefore, why his father had acted with such theatrical self-pity when selling off the only other inheritance with which Haffner had been involved. Papa had been the greatest collector of cricketana the world had ever seen: he bought engravings, handkerchiefs printed with the laws of the game, mugs, memoirs, the technical manuals. In cricket, Papa found his reason for being. It made him safe. He compiled bibliographies, small monographs on centenary tankards. Haffner had inherited this love – a love he had passed on to Benjamin, his grandson and heir. Then, before Papa died, in what Haffner regarded with tacit admiration as an act of grand malevolence, but which was interpreted by everyone else as an act of petty and vindictive spite, he auctioned the entire collection. So that in the course of Haffner’s life, in random provincial museums, he would observe a small typewritten card marked neatly in a bottom corner with his ancestral name.
When Haffner’s mother died, no one expected his father to be sad. Only Haffner. It didn’t amaze Haffner to receive a noble letter from his father in which Solomon told him that had he never known his wife, that grief would have been even greater than the grief he now felt at this temporary separation imposed on them. And maybe this was not so wrong. Maybe this was the only way in which Solomon Haffner could have loved his wife, in this exorbitant way – writing to posterity. Whereas Haffner’s love for his mother had been different. It was all nostalgic. Whenever he remembered her, it was only as an idyll.
But then maybe every idyll is remembered: maybe memory is a condition of the idyllic.
&nb
sp; So Haffner had sat there, his father’s letter beside him, and remembered how his mother used to lay the lemon meringue pie on the stone floor of the larder, so that it could set.
6
The previous section, dear reader, as Haffner is lost in his memories, is a way of describing Raphael Haffner asleep.
For although to Haffner’s dismay his penis had begun to burgeon towards Viko’s hand, thus creating, in Haffner’s opinion, a situation of the utmost delicacy, he couldn’t think what to do. The solutions seemed absent. Previously, when faced by situations which disturbed him, Haffner had consulted his mental library of exempla. So now, desperate, with his face down, Haffner tried to consider his mentors. But, once more, the external forces which tended to disrupt the straight line of Haffner’s life overtook him.
Worried, Haffner fell asleep. He relaxed. He drifted into a place of absence, emptiness. Drifting further, his legs spread slightly more apart, in a gesture which was unmistakably flirtatious, thought Viko.
Viko was used to these situations. They occurred often, in his candlelit basement. They followed an ordinary pattern.
Viko, poised above Haffner’s back, couldn’t see that Haffner’s eyes were closed. He assumed that the greater deepness of Haffner’s breathing meant only one thing: the masseur’s skill at finding individual ways to please the gratified client. He continued to move his hands around Haffner’s thighs, the tops of his thighs, brushing his penis and testicles with slow abandon. All the signs were there. The fact that Haffner had made no protest; the fact that he had positioned his penis deliberately so that its tip was softly available to Viko’s touch; the fact that now he was even moving his legs apart to allow the masseur easier access: these were the ordinary, done thing.
His fingers ran up and down the shaft of Haffner’s penis. As Haffner slept, Viko touched him, slid his hand in such a way that Haffner half woke, aroused, descending into thoughts of Livia: the only woman who had ever touched his penis so deftly. Who, even before their wedding in the Abbey Road Synagogue, as Haffner never tired of remembering, slipped her hand beneath the tightness of his waistband, just as she had done before: a gesture which remained the erotic zenith of Haffner’s marriage.
7
Haffner’s wedding! At this zenith, while Haffner remains there, happily asleep, with his penis in a stranger’s hand, I am suddenly reminded of another Haffnerian story.
Haffner used to tell his stories in the car, while he was driving. Haffner drove like they drive in the ancient movies: inexplicably watching his passenger, and not the road. Between rows of parked cars, Haffner drove – as if before a pre-recorded backdrop – courageously oblivious to the malice of wing mirrors.
And, one night, Haffner told me the story of his wedding.
The service had been taken by his rabbi: the Reverend Ephraim Levine. The kindest man in the world, said Haffner. A very fine man. Who in fact, strange as it may seem, became the legal guardian of every Jewish refugee to London from Germany before the war. But that was another story. Yes, that was another story, which involved the story Haffner preferred to forget: of a girl upstairs in a locked bathroom, young Raphael adding up his batting average in the dining room with a pencil stub, its end wrinkled where he sucked it. Whereas a story Haffner always remembered was his father leaving the wedding service and asking for theological guidance.
—Ephie, why do we have two days for Rosh Hashanah?
And the Reverend Ephraim Levine looked at him and said:
—Solly, why do we have five days for Ascot?
It was very fine, said Haffner. Very fine. He was the wittiest of men. You never knew what to expect. And after the wedding, after his mother had by mistake drunk the wine which was meant for the bride, thus causing a dumbshow, a hiatus in the service, there was a tea dance at the Rembrandt Hotel, in Knightsbridge. Haffner’s padre from his unit shared a taxi to the reception with the Reverend Levine. And did I know, Haffner asked, what the padre had said to him, astonished, when they returned to the unit? The padre took him aside. The things he had been told, the padre confided in Haffner, afterwards, refusing to enlarge this statement with detail. The things the Reverend Levine had told him. He had been shocked, said the padre: absolutely shocked.
And now, I think, I know what Haffner liked in this anecdote. He liked the revelation that all men were men of this world. Because every story, for Haffner, was the same.
Haffner was an admirer of the classics. He went to the classics for the higher gossip. Haffner, humble Haffner, wanted to understand how everything declined and fell. The history of the classical era was the history of decadence. Curious, Haffner read of Nero and his monstrous appetite – which overruled his reason so comprehensively that Nero devised a pretty game. He was released from a den, dressed in the skins of wild animals, and would then gnaw at the penises and exposed pubic bushes of servile men and women who had been bound naked to stakes. Haffner appreciated the underlying philosophy. For, in the vocabulary of Solomon Haffner, the patriarch of Haffner, to live one’s life was the same thing, in the end, as wasting it. This was what the stories taught the gentle reader. Just as the classical, in the end, wasn’t really classical: it led for ever to the Goths, to the Picts and the Saxons, the Visigoths and Ostrogoths: all the savage barbarians. The classical only existed in retrospect, when everything was over. You couldn’t separate the classic from the decadent. No, the defeat might seem to come from nowhere, but really there was no escape from it: because it was visible, really, all along, from the beginning. So every story was a story of defeat. Even the stories about the victories.
Yes, I think now, as I contemplate the stories of Haffner, this seems true. Victory is only a series of slow defeats. Defeats so slow that for a moment they could seem like a victory.
Or maybe it was only true of Haffner. Maybe this was only the principle of Haffner’s exorbitant life.
8
For this was how the farce of Haffner’s finale continued. As Viko tended to Haffner’s penis, Haffner’s phone began to ring, pulsing where it lay – the shrill twin to his penis which was pulsing, contentedly, in Viko’s hand. Blearily, his heart pounding with an ill heaviness in his chest, he raised his head and – a gecko – stared at Viko.
Haffner never did anything wrong – not willingly. It was just he was so often trapped by forces which were beyond him. But no one believed him.
The degree to which this scene seemed his fault was debatable. Perhaps Haffner, in some way, was guilty. Usually, the guilt came from women. The list of the women who felt disappointed by Haffner was one which Haffner usually preferred to ignore. At its head, there was Barbra, who had given up, she said, so much for him: but then there were all the others – Cynthia, with freckled hands; Joan, who only drank champagne; Hyacinth, who cried whenever Haffner called her; and Pilar, who was happily married, she said, happily married. But Haffner would never join this resigned lament. When it came to guilt, Haffner was immune.
This wasn’t to say he regretted nothing. Not at all. Naturally, there were things he regretted. Regret was the territory. But regret, he wanted to assure the absent gods, the cartoon gods, was not responsibility.
Once more, he tried to convince the world that the world was a menace for Haffner. Hazily, he explained to Viko that he had just dropped off there. He had no idea, really. To which Viko, a professional of politesse, simply replied that but of course.
There was a pause of awkwardness.
—I should take this, said Haffner – pointing to the telephone: relieved in relation to the masseur; depressed in relation to the fact that, once more, it was Benjamin.
—This is the third time I’m calling you, said Benjamin.
—Really? said Haffner.
—I’m just saying, said Benjamin. You could at least be polite.
—I don’t think, Benjamin, said Haffner, that you should be lecturing others on how to live their lives.
Haffner’s opinion of Benjamin had once been more forgiving. W
hen Benji had been into sports, Haffner had adored him.
Like Haffner before him, Benji was a goalkeeper. Haffner would watch him from the touchline, in the Jewish soccer leagues. Benji possessed poise. He had the weight. He was noted for his bravery. As colossal boys jinked and trampled towards him, Benjamin didn’t hang back. He didn’t remain stymied on the goal line. No, he closed down the angle. He tumbled down at their dangerous feet. Haffner applauded. Benjamin pretended not to be pleased. Mimicking the great goalkeepers of the past, he pretended to care only about his team. Having gathered the ball, he would ferociously bowl it to a free player on the wing, or kick it back into the opposing half. With the back of his gloved hand, Benjamin would smear the mud across his sweating forehead. Then, silhouetted at the far end of the pitch, in splendid isolation, Benjamin leaned against a goalpost. He observed the flow of play. He lined up the fingers of his padded gloves on each hand, as if in prayer.
At the weekends, when Benji was meant to be learning the piano, studying some piece by Mendelssohn, with a bordered cream cover, Haffner read the paper. In the adjoining study – called so boyishly and pathetically his den – Esmond looked at X-rays in his lightbox. As soon as Esmond wandered away, then Haffner began with the weighty discussion of sports.
Then, a few years later, a change occurred. Or not so much a change in Benji’s character: just a change in the objects of its affection. The reasons for this affection had always been the same. There he was, on the outskirts of London, in the northern suburbs, and Benjamin discovered drugs. Not the terrifying, working-class drugs: not the crack and the glue and the marker pens. Instead, he discovered the recreational drugs, the ones with intellectual pedigree. Benjamin discovered the lure of cool. It upset Haffner, but he coped. It was, at least, a pastime he could understand. Now, even that had changed too. Now, for reasons which Haffner could not understand – in fact, he did not believe there was any actual reason – Benjamin had adopted his race’s religion. He had adopted it, said Haffner, with a vengeance. And this vengeance, thought Haffner, was continuing.
The Escape: A Novel Page 9