The holy man in all but age – the holy boy – was distressed but not terrified. He, too, seemed to know they would not kill him. But this could not be allowed to continue, whatever he thought. Unsure how to proceed, Treslove looked around. A woman his age, walking a dog, caught his eye. This cannot be allowed to continue, her look said. Treslove nodded.
‘Hey, what’s going on?’ the woman with the dog shouted.
‘Hey!’ Treslove shouted.
The schoolchildren weighed up the situation. Maybe it was the woman’s dog that decided them. Maybe they just wanted to be shown a way out of this themselves.
‘We’re just messing about,’ one of them said.
‘Shoo!’ the woman said, bringing her dog forward. It was only a terrier, with a bemused upper-class Bertie Wooster expression, but a dog’s a dog.
‘Shoo yourself,’ one of the girls told her.
‘Cunt!’ shouted a boy, backing off.
‘Hey!’ Treslove shouted.
‘We were only being friendly,’ another girl said. She made it sound as though these two busybodies had gone and lost the Jew a whole new bunch of chums.
They broke up and withdrew, not all at once but a bit at a time, like the tide receding from the outlandish thing it had washed up. Left alone, the outlandish thing went on its way. He didn’t thank the woman or Treslove or even the woman’s dog. Probably against his religion, Treslove thought. But for a fleeting second Treslove caught his beautiful coal-black eye. The boy was not angry. Treslove wasn’t even sure he’d been afraid. What Treslove saw in his face was accustomedness.
‘You OK?’ Treslove asked.
The boy shrugged. It was almost an insolent gesture. This is simply the way of it, the shrug said. Don’t make a fuss. With maybe a touch of proud, God-protected, stand-offishness in it. He finds me an unclean thing, Treslove thought.
Treslove rolled his eyes at the woman. She did the same to him. Go figure these kids.
Treslove returned to the bench on which he’d been dozing earlier. He was, he discovered, shaking.
He couldn’t get the phrase out of his head. It’s a Jew!
But he was battling other phrases of his own. Then why dress like that? Then why present yourself to them? And why couldn’t you thank us? And why did you look at me as though to you I too am an ‘it’?
One of the girls had not run off with the others. She lingered, looking about her. Treslove had the dread thought that she was going to try to pick him up. Maybe offer him services for pocket money. He must have looked an easy touch, sitting on the bench, shaking
She bent down, not looking at him, to take off her shoes. It was at that moment that he recognised her. She was the schoolgirl in his once recurring dream – once recurring before Hephzibah, that is – the schoolgirl who paused in her running to take off the shoes that impeded her – whether vulnerable or resolute in her pleated skirt, white blouse, blue jumper and artfully twisted tie, he had never been able to decide. The schoolgirl in a hurry of which he hadn’t ever known if he would like to be the object.
‘Why are you taking off your shoes?’ he asked.
She surveyed him as though it would have been obvious to anyone but a moron why she was taking off her shoes: in order to scrape him off the bottoms.
‘Freak!’ she said, contorting her face at him, and then running off through the grass.
It’s a freak.
Nothing personal, then. It’s a freak, it’s a Jew. Just whoever wasn’t them.
Not worth anybody dying for.
Or was the opposite the truth: Not worth anybody living for?
3
It was early evening by the time he got back to the apartment. He’d needed a drink.
It was a good job that no fragile shiksa with a watery Ophelia expression had come into the bar in which he drank. He might have taken her back into the park and drowned them both.
The apartment was oddly quiet. No Hephzibah. He went looking for her. No Hephzibah in the kitchen, no Hephzibah sprawled out in the living room watching television and wondering where he’d been, no Hephzibah in the bedroom in an oriental housecoat and with a rose between her teeth, no Hephzibah in the bathroom. But he could smell her perfume. One of her wardrobe doors was open and there were shoes scattered on the floor. She had gone out.
Then, as though a stone had been thrown at his temples, he remembered. It was the museum night. The launch. The Grand Opening, as Hephzibah had refused to call it. Jesus Christ! They were meant to be there at five thirty, the doors opening for guests at six fifteen. Early had been Hephzibah’s instruction. Early and brief. Get in, get out, attracting as little attention as possible. Even the invitations had been insignificant and posted late. Normally, as Treslove had observed to Hephzibah, Jews loved invitations. They were totemic, invariably embossed in gold Gothic lettering on thick slabs of card, over-enthusiastic in expression and sent out months in advance. Come to a party! Start thinking about a present! Start planning your wardrobe! Start losing weight! Hephzibah made sure her invitation was small and flimsy and crept into the world.
He had not promised her he would not be late. There was no need. He was never late. Most of the time he didn’t leave the apartment. And he did not forget arrangements.
So why was he late, and why had he forgotten this arrangement?
He knew what Hephzibah would say. She would say he forgot because he wanted to forget. Not for her to reason why. Because he had fallen out of love with her, perhaps. Because he was irrationally jealous of his friend. Because he had begun to oppose the museum in his heart.
She had not left him a note. That, to Treslove, suggested a very high degree of anger and hurt. He had cut her out without a word; she would do the same.
He wondered if it was all over between them. Libor’s doing, if so. There are some events which make it impossible to go back to where you were. After Libor, who had brought them together, nothing. Not impossibly, that was his intention. Those whom I have joined together I will put asunder. Treslove sympathised with Libor’s reasoning. Libor had discovered him to be a sneak and a fornicator and a braggart. He had fouled Finkler’s nest and would foul Libor’s via Hephzibah. What did he want with them, this cuckoo goy? Sucking at their tragedy because his own life was a farce. Go home, Julian. Go back to where you came from. Leave us in peace.
He sat on the edge of his bed, his head banging, agreeing with that judgement. His life had been a farce. Every element of it ludicrous. And yes, it was true, he had tried to nose his way into other people’s tragedy and grandeur since he couldn’t lay hands on any of his own. He had meant no harm or disrespect by it, quite the contrary; but it was theft all right.
‘It’s a Jew!’ the schoolchildren had laughed, and Treslove had taken the taunt personally. It had been as a spear in his own side. But what, beyond the obligation as an adult to clip every one of the little mamzers round the ear, did any of it have to do with him? Why had he staggered from his park bench like a wounded beast, and gone looking for alcohol? To take away the pain of what?
Time for another goodbye, then. Why not? Goodbyes were what he had always been good at. What was one more?
He watched his life go in a variety of directions. It was like being drunk. Being drunk was like being drunk. Maybe he would lurch out of the door and never be seen again. Maybe he would pack a case and go back to his Hampstead flat which was not in Hampstead. Maybe he would throw on some clothes and dash over to the museum. ‘Sorry, darling, am I in time for a last kosher canapé?’
One of those illusory fits of exhilaration to which purposeless men are susceptible seized him. The world was all before him, where to choose his place of rest. Lurching out of the door and vanishing was favourite. There was honour in it as well as wildness. Gifting Hephzibah his absence and gifting himself his liberty. Let’s go, he thought. Let’s be on our way. He would have punched the air had he been a man who punched the air.
But the sight of Hephzibah’s shoes in a tangle touched
him. He loved the woman. She had synced him up with the universe. She might not ever forgive him for what he’d done but he owed her, owed himself, owed them both, a second chance. He showered quickly, put on a black suit, and ran out.
The darkness shocked him. He checked his watch. Eight forty-five! How had that happened? It was just after seven when he got back from the park. Where had the time gone? Was it possible he had passed out on the bed, between imagining making a run for it, and remembering how much he loved her through her shoes? He must have. There was no other explanation. He had fallen asleep for the second time that day and not known it. He was not in charge of himself. Things happened to him. He was not the agent of his own life. He wasn’t even living his own life.
It was only a ten-minute walk but it was fraught with dangers. The lamp posts were rearing up at him again. He imagined colliding with trees and pillar boxes. There was too much traffic on the road, all going too fast. Buses laboured up the incline. Behind them cars pulled out on nothing other than a hunch that it was safe for them to do so. Every bone in his body ached in anticipation of the impact.
He tried not to read the Arab graffiti on the walls of the Beatles’ old recording studio.
It was about nine when he arrived at the museum. The lights were on in the building and a small number of people – perhaps a dozen – were congregated outside. Congregated was not, perhaps, the word. Congregation suggests intention and he wasn’t sure there was any reason for these people to be there. He had half expected to see banners. Death to Jewzs. Cartoons of glutton-Yids devouring babies and Stars of David metamorphosing into swastikas. Such images were no longer even shocking. You could find them inside, or even on the covers of the most reputable publications. The streets had been full these last few weeks with stray demonstrators from Trafalgar Square and the Israeli Embassy, the human shrapnel of a deafening barrage of outrage, and Treslove would not have been surprised to see them here, hoping to get the attention of one or other of Hephzibah’s important Jewish guests, an ambassador, an MP, a pillar of the community. Stop the massacre. Condemn the carnage. Kill the Jewzs. But everything appeared quiet and orderly. There wasn’t even, as far as he could see, an ASHamed Jew come out to protest his hang-dog dissolidarity with his own people.
Finkler? Was Finkler in or out? Finkler hidden in the small crowd, biding his time, or in the building, Hephzibah’s proxy escort since her real one had let her down?
It was a Finkler event. Sam had a more natural right to be inside than Treslove did.
He wasn’t outside, anyway. These were just smokers, Treslove decided. Or people come out to get some air.
He walked around them to the entrance where a couple of security men asked to see his invitation. He didn’t have it. There was no reason, he explained, for him to be carrying an invitation. He was not a guest. He was virtually the host.
Entrance was strictly by invitation only, they told him. No invitation, no party. He explained that it wasn’t a party. It was a reception. See! – how would he know it was a reception and not a party if he was merely a stranger looking for trouble? He could tell them what was in every room. Go on, test me. Hephzibah Weizenbaum, the director of the museum, was his partner. Perhaps if someone could notify her he was here . . .
They shook their heads. He wondered if she’d warned them not to let him in. Or maybe they smelt alcohol on his breath.
‘Come on, guys,’ he said, attempting to push past them, but non-aggressively, a sort of ironic sidle. The bigger of the two grabbed him by his arm.
‘Hey!’ Treslove said. ‘That’s assault.’
He turns in the hope of encountering a sympathetic face. Perhaps someone who recognises him and can vouch for the truth of what he’s saying. But he finds himself looking into the wild eyes of the grizzled warrior Jew in the PLO scarf who parks his motorbike in the forecourt of the synagogue he can see from the terrace of Hephzibah’s apartment. Ah, he thinks. Ah! He gets it. These people are not, after all, smokers or guests from the reception come out to take the air. They are holding a silent vigil. A woman is carrying a blown-up photograph of an Arab family. A mother, a father, a baby. Next to her, a man carries a candle. They themselves might be Arabs, but not all the party are. The grizzled biker in the PLO scarf, for example. He is not an Arab.
‘So what’s this?’ Treslove asks.
They ignore him. No one wants trouble. The security man who grabbed Treslove’s arm approaches him again. ‘I’m going to have to ask you to move on, sir,’ he says.
‘Are you Jewish?’ Treslove asks.
‘Sir,’ the security man says.
‘I’m asking you a civil question,’ Treslove says. ‘Because if you’re Jewish I want to know why you’re allowing this demonstration to go ahead. This is not an embassy. And if you’re not Jewish I want to know what you’re doing here at all.’
‘It’s not a demonstration,’ the man holding the candle says. ‘We’re just here.’
‘You’re just here. I can see that,’ Treslove says. ‘But why are you just here? This is a Jewish museum. It’s a place of study and reflection. It isn’t the fucking West Bank. We’re not at war here.’
Someone takes hold of him. He is not sure who. Perhaps two people take hold of him. They might be the security men, they might not. Treslove knows where this must end. He is not frightened. The Sephardic boy was not frightened, he will not be frightened. He sees the boy’s weary, accustomed face. ‘It’s a Jew!’ That’s just the way of it. He sees the schoolgirl bending to tie her shoelace. ‘Freak!’
He lashes out. He doesn’t care who he hits. Or who hits him. He would like it to be, either way, the traitor in the PLO scarf. But if it isn’t, it isn’t. He has no desire, though, to hit an Arab. He hears shouting. He would like it if one of them pushed him up against a wall and said, ‘You Ju!’ It’s heroic to die a Jew. If you have to die for something, let it be for being Jewish. ‘You Ju,’ and then the knife at your throat. That’s what you call a serious death, not the shit Treslove’s been doing all his life.
Something presses in his ribs but it’s not a knife. It’s a fist. He punches back. They are struggling now, Treslove and he is not sure who or how many. He hears a commotion, but it might be the commotion of his heart. He stumbles, losing his footing on the unlevel ground. Then he falls headlong. Headlights blind him. Suddenly his shoulder hurts. He closes his eyes.
When he opens them the Jew in the PLO scarf is bending over him. ‘Are you all right?’ he asks.
Treslove is surprised by the gentleness of his manner. He would have expected him to spit fire, like his motor bike.
‘Do you know where you are?’ His questions are almost doctorly. Is that what the madman is, Treslove wonders – an eminent Ju physician in a PLO scarf?
He stares up at him, wondering if he’s been recognised as the glowerer from Hephzibah’s terrace. Since this is Hephzibah’s occasion the connection would not be difficult to make.
But if the biker does recognise him, he doesn’t let on. ‘Do you know your name?’ he persists, still showing concern.
‘Brad Pitt,’ Treslove replies. ‘What’s yours?’
‘Sydney.’ His voice is cultivated and soothing. Patient. He takes off his scarf and makes a pillow of it for Treslove’s head. ‘You were lucky he had good brakes,’ he says.
‘Who?’ Treslove asks, but doesn’t hear the answer.
Rather than be beholden to Sydney, and whatever sickly cause of humane self-abnegation he serves by wreathing himself in the scarf of his people’s enemies, Treslove wishes the brakes had not been so good.
Rather than be beholden to Treslove and the woman with the dog, had the young Sephardic Jew wished, likewise, to be left to his tormentors?
Funny thing, ingratitude, Treslove thinks, closing his eyes again. It’s been a long day.
He is not badly hurt but the hospital keeps him in overnight. To be on the safe side. Hephzibah visits but he is sleeping. ‘Don’t wake him,’ she says.
She believes he knows she’s there but doesn’t want to acknowledge her. She has become part of all that disgusts him. Like Libor, he wants out. She’s wrong. But it doesn’t matter. What she might be wrong about today she will be right about tomorrow.
EPILOGUE
Since Libor has no children, we will say Kaddish for him, Hephzibah and Finkler had agreed. As a non-Jew, Treslove was not permitted to recite the Jewish prayer for the dead and so had been excluded from their deliberations.
I am not a synagogue person, Hephzibah says. I cannot bear the business of who you can and who you cannot say Kaddish for, where and when you sit, let alone what is permitted to a woman and how that differs from one denomination of synagogue to another. Our religion does not exactly make it easy for you. So I will pray at home.
And she does.
For the dead and the dead to her.
For Libor she cries her eyes dry.
For Julian, because she cannot in her heart exclude Julian, she cries bitter tears that come from a part of her she doesn’t recognise. She’s cried for men she’s loved before. But with them it was the finality of separation that pained her. With Julian it’s different: was he ever there to feel separated from? Was she just an experiment for him? Was he just an experiment for her?
He’d told her she was his fate. Who wants to be somebody’s fate?
It is less convenient for Samuel Finkler but perhaps more straightforward. He must go to his nearest synagogue and say the prayer he first heard on his own father’s lips. Yisgadal viyiskadash . . . the ancient language of the Hebrews tolling for the dead. May His great Name grow exalted and sanctified. This he does three times a day. When the deceased is not a parent the obligation to say Kaddish ceases after thirty days rather than eleven months. But Finkler does not give up saying it after thirty days. No one can make him. He is not sure he will even give up saying it after eleven months, though he grasps the reasoning in favour of stopping: so that the souls of the unlamented dead might find their way at last to Paradise. But he doesn’t think it will be his praying that prevents them getting there.
The Finkler Question Page 35