The only thing mixed about Copestake was the business he was doing, swallowing up every import warehouse and factory, every betting shop and flop house he could get his hands on in a rough square bounded by Cheetham Hill Road, Waterloo Road, Derby Street, and Strangeways. He’d grown up there, poor and unloved — for who can love a cockroach? Not even another cockroach can love a cockroach — and now was systematically making himself sole landlord of the place. Copestake returns! Deny me this time!
Another psychotic winner riding in triumph through Persepolis.
Among the warehouses he had most recently gobbled down was Patkin Bros, importers of chipped tsatskes from Taiwan, every one a shneid — my father’s biggest creditor. If Patkin Bros called in then that was that. And why wouldn’t they, now they were Patkin Bros only in name, in reality Cockroach and Son?
For two whole weeks my father went about klopping the side of his head. ‘How do you like it! Of all people! Him, of all people! What are the chances of that happening? Copestake! A klog oyf im! How many million people are there in Manchester? Two million? Three million? And it has to be Copestake. What are the chances of that? You’re the mathematician, Oliver — what are the chances of that?’
‘Between two and three million to one,’ I said.
Knowing the cold figures only made it worse. ‘Three million to one! Three million to one and it has to be that farbissener! My mazel!’
‘You could try talking to him,’ my mother said, from the shadows. She was lying down with a cold compress on her head. Migraine. We all had one. A migraine each. All except my father who could go on and on klopping the side of his head and never even get a headache.
‘I’ve tried talking to him.’
‘Recently?’
‘What’s recently? I’ve tried talking to him. He doesn’t talk. He puts bricks under vans. And he swears like a yok.’
‘I could try talking to her.’
‘Why bother talking to her? She’s tsedrait. She shakes all day.’
‘She’s got St Vitus’s. You should be sorry for her. She didn’t shake before she married him. She was a Fingerhutt before she married him.’
‘I know she was a Fingerhutt. What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘I went to school with her.’
‘I went to school with him.’
‘They were nice people, the Fingerhutts. Her father was a lovely man. Very gentle. I could talk to her.’
‘What about? Her father? They may be very nice people, the Fingerhutts, they may be the nicest people in Manchester. But they’ll still want their money.’
‘I thought you said it’s not their money. I thought you said it’s Morris and Henry Patkin’s money.’
He threw his hands in the air. ‘Just leave it to me,’ he said. ‘You’ve never understood money.’
And a month later he was mechullah.
All very well having everything we owned in my mother’s name, we still had to upkeep it. And we still had to eat.
My sisters were working, but they had flibbertigibbet jobs like demonstrating in Kendalls or giving away cigarettes at car shows, and they spent more on vanity bags and false eyelashes than they earned. Their long-term prospects were good — you never heard of a demonstrator at Kendalls who didn’t ultimately marry well — but until then we couldn’t look to them to do much more than buy their own bagels every Sunday. And not give my father the platz in these trying times by being seen out on the arm of a shvartzer.
As for me, I’d be off to Golem College any day now, and there was no question of my putting that off to help out. I was the future. Our hedge against ever having to be sent back to the Bug.
‘I could try the buses again,’ my father said.
‘Over my dead body,’ my mother told him.
Shtuck, that’s what we were in. Serious shtuck.
Then, out of the blue, mitten derinnen, Sheeny turned up with a suggestion. Lancelot Waxman, his armour ringing as he rode between the barley sheaves. Singing tirra lirra, instead of oink oink.
Giving Sheeny his cards hadn’t been easy for my father. Despite their age difference, they had grown fond of each other. Sheeny was like a little old man half the time, anyway. And my father was more of a boy than I had ever succeeded in being. So they met each other coming the other way. They had good times together. Better times, I suspect, than they ever let on. And no doubt better times than Sheeny and I had ever had. They were on a similar wavelength. They were both pleasure opportunists. They didn’t think there was anything wrong with tsatskying if it made you happy. And they worked well as a team. As my father said, they shifted a lot of gear between them.
‘It won’t be the same without you revving up the Commer outside my lettee in the shvitzing cold, Joel,’ Sheeny told him. ‘I won’t know what to do with myself Shabbes mornings.’
‘You could try going to shool,’ my father said.
‘Only if you pick me up and take me, Joel.’
I wasn’t there when they shook hands and called it quits, but my father described the farewells to us. ‘I don’t know what the kid’s going to do now,’ he said. ‘He took it hard.’
He was taking it hard himself.
‘He’s not a kid,’ I said. ‘He’s five years older than me. And every grafter in Manchester will be after him once the word’s out that you’ve sacked him.’
‘I haven’t sacked him. That farbissener Copestake’s sacked him.’
A couple of afternoons later, sitting over keife and coffee in the KD, Sheeny said, ‘I’m worried about your old man. He’s getting on. What’s he going to do now?’
That was the nice thing about the KD. You had to have skirt with you but you weren’t obliged to address it. You just talked normally, as though it wasn’t there.
‘He isn’t getting on,’ I said. ‘He’s only about five years older than me. He’ll be all right. He’s a good grafter.’
‘You’re telling me he’s a good grafter? Listen to me, Oliver — he’s the best grafter there is, your old man.’
‘Then he’ll be all right. He’ll find something. Another coffee, girls?’
But no one is in too much of a hurry to employ a person who’s just gone mechullah, good grafter or not. It’s bad karma, apart from anything else. Shit sticks. And you’re always wondering -did he go bust because he’s a shmuck or because he’s a villain?
Of course your old enemies are quick to offer you something demeaning. Copestake himself put it about, for example, that he was prepared to let bygones be bygones and rustle my father up a warehouseman’s job or the like provided he came crawling on his belly to ask for it.
‘I’d rather beg on the streets,’ my father said.
Which, week by week, was looking more and more like his only option. Until — tirra lirra — Lancelot Waxman came riding out of the shtuck-mist.
I was surprised to see him at the door. I wasn’t aware we were going out that night. I was also surprised not to see him in a whistle and flute (which meant we definitely weren’t going out that night). He was wearing jeans, which I’d never suspected him of owning, and a turtleneck sweater, ditto. Casual didn’t suit him. It diminished him. It took away from his seriousness. Especially the roll neck, which chafed his skin and exacerbated the twitching. But I now understand that his choice of wardrobe was dictated by exquisite tact. He didn’t want to look prosperous. He didn’t want to appear up while my father was down. He didn’t want to look like the boss. For that was the proposition he had come to put. That he should now employ my father!
‘This is the emmes, Joel. I’m offering you the job you gave me, except that I’ll still be pitching and you’ll still be working the edge. It’ll be no different. You can even pick me up in the shvitzing cold. But half an hour later.’
‘This is very, very nice of you,’ my father said. ‘I really appreciate it. But I don’t think it’s on.’
‘Why not? Have you got a better offer?’
‘I’ll be straight with you,
Sheeny — I don’t have any offer. So I’m grateful to you. But I don’t see it.’
‘What don’t you see? It’ll be the same as before. I’ll sleep, you’ll graft.’
‘It can’t be the same, Sheeny. I’ve lost the gaffs, for a start.’
‘We’ll get new gaffs. We’ll get better gaffs. That was half the trouble. Your gaffs were no bottle, Joel.’
Tough words. No gaff worker wants to be told his gaffs were no botde. Not when you’ve put as much work into greasing up the Tobies as my father had. But he had to take it. That’s what going mechullah means. You have to accept the world’s retrospective judgement on you.
‘No gaffs are any bottle these days. The gaffs are over.’
‘We’ll find. We’ll find. You leave that to me. The gaffs are my deigeh.’
‘I don’t think I’ve got the stomach left for it, Sheeny.’
‘You’ve got a stomach left for eating, Joel.’
My father patted himself. ‘Well it won’t do any harm to eat a little less,’ he said.
‘Who’s talking less? If you’re not working soon you’ll be eating gornisht. Am I right? Say you’ll think about it, at least.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘No. Reem. Say you’ll seriously think about it.’
‘I’ll seriously think about it.’
‘Good. Don’t take too long, that’s all I ask. I’ll ring you later tonight.’
‘That’s a bit soon, Sheeny. Ring me tomorrow. But you know now what the answer’s going to be.’
‘I’ll ring you in the morning, Joel. Not too early. Sleep on it.’ And he went off, goaded to madness by his turtleneck, jerking and twitching like Houdini in a straitjacket that was finally too much for him.
My father, too, was exercising tact. He hadn’t said, ‘Sheeny, it takes money to start a business. I know how much I’ve been paying you. And I know how much you spend on cuff-links. Forgive me, but you’re dreaming.’
They had to get to that, in the end. ‘I know it’s none of my business,’ my father finally said, ‘but how are you … ?’
‘That’s a fair question, Joel. I’ve got a backer. And if you’re worried, I’ll pay you three months’ greens in advance. How’s that?’
How else could it be?
And the backer? Well, as my father said, it was none of our business. But you can’t help being curious. And our curiosity stopped at the door of Sheeny’s father. Who else? Of course Sheeny was being mysterious. He didn’t want to say, ‘My dad. That’s who.’ Whereas a backer had the ring of high finance about it.
But he let the cat out of the bag to me, one night, having got himself uncharacteristically drunk. One thimbleful of sweet red Israeli wine from a squeaky padded bar had done it. Another way in which he was like my father. Shicker at the sight of a corkscrew. We were with keife in Benny the Pole’s pad. Our last night there for the time being. Because in the morning Benny would be out of cheder. Not free, just on highly conditional parole — which, wouldn’t you know, the meshuggener blew, but free enough to stand on the pavement outside the Kardomah again and waylay young women. I made some denigrating reference to criminals and society’s responsibility to lock ‘em all up for life, especially arsonists who fuck up to the extent of making millionaires out of their victims. ‘Well, let’s hope he ends up making millionaires out of us, Oliver,’ he said. I said that I didn’t see how Benny the Pole was ever likely to make anything out of me, and that was when Sheeny blurted out that he’d already made an employed man out of my father.
‘Benny the Pole?’
Benny the Pole.
‘You’re not saying … ?’
He was saying.
‘The Benny the Pole?’
‘The geezer whose let you’ve been shtupping in for years, Oliver, yes. The Benny the Pole. The only fucking Benny the Pole.’
There were things about finance and the justice system I didn’t understand. For example that you could give somebody money when you were in cheder. For example that you were allowed to have money when you were in cheder. Didn’t they take it all away from you? Wasn’t that its point as a deterrent?
There was a differece, Sheeny explained, between a bankrupt and a lag. Benny the Pole had never gone bankrupt.
Cheder yes, mechullah no.
It felt like a value judgement. Against my father.
I couldn’t believe it. Hauled out of the shtuck, snatched from penury and starvation, pulled off the cross, by Benny the Pole. A spiv in a toupee. An arsonist. A croaker into the ears of young women. A croaker into the ears of young women, what is more, on behalf of other croakers. What did that make him? What did that make us?
I felt quite sick.
‘Just don’t ever tell my father,’ I said.
But Sheeny only threw me a long strange look.
* * *
Funny the way life works. Thanks to Benny the Pole there was smetana and kez on our table again. And thanks to Gershom Finkel there is bread on mine.
Only partly thanks to, in both instances, but still. And not that much smetana and kez, or bread, but again, still. You don’t look a gift-horse.
They do what they do, these ganovim. They do their best for you. It’s not Gershom’s fault if I don’t live to the standard I would like. And you can hardly blame Benny the Pole for the dejection that settled on my father once he went to work for Sheeny. You can’t be employed by someone who was once employed by you and be happy about it. You can’t fall from high to low and be expected to enjoy it. Unless you happen to be a glutton for punishment. Which my father wasn’t.
One in a family is enough.
TWO
I seemed to be forever shrinking into myself, while others around me were forever sliding away.
The Money Player: The Confessions of America’s Greatest
Table Tennis Champion and Hustler, Marty Reismann
WE NOW ENTER an embarrassing phase even by the standards of this history of embarrassments.
You’ve heard me make that claim before. But then I was preparing the ground for nothing more embarrassing than the years I spent locked away in the lavatory cutting up and otherwise defaming loved ones. Pish! What I am about to describe is embarrassment big time. Mortification Grandiflora. First Degree Humiliation with Aggravated Abasement.
We now enter Cambridge.
As a fall-back position for someone of my grandiosity, Cambridge had this and this alone going for it — you had to be there to know how bad it was.
Back home in the Kardomah no one knew from nothing. Cambridge? Gevalt! They stared when I walked in, broke the house rules in the excitement, looked me over with hymeneal eyes. Which in the end was all you could ask.
I remember Alex Libstein, the estate agent’s son, trying to put me down when I was back in Manchester one vacation being seen at Laps’, where they also knew from nothing. We were in the pickle meat queue together. ‘Isn’t Oxford supposed to better than Cambridge?’ he wondered in a loud voice.
‘Depends on the subject, Alex,’ I told him. ‘For economics, languages and law, maybe, but not for spying or any of the moral sciences.’
That’s grandiosity — dropping the phrase moral sciences in Laps’ on a Saturday night.
Grandiosity tinged with sadness though, because I knew even if they didn’t.
So was that what Oliver the Ripper was reading at Cambridge — Moral Sciences? Was that to be my antidote to tsatskying? Hobbes’s Leviathan? Yes and no. What you read at Cambridge, and certainly how you read it, has a lot to do with the college you wind up in. Left to its own devices, Golem College would have preferred its undergraduates not to read anything at all. Sanctuary — that was what Golem provided. A quiet out of the way place by the river for rugby backs and javelin throwers to while their best years away in, undisturbed by thought. As for me, yes, I’m sure of it — they wanted me for my ping-pong and wouldn’t have minded if I’d never written an essay the whole time I was there, so long as I led them to the t
op of the UCTTC ping-pong ladder at the end of the year and was instrumental, as a Golem man, in turning the tables on Oxford who to date had the wood on us when it came to table games. But every Cambridge college must present a semblance of academic activity. The college had a library; someone had to go in it once in a while and at least pretend to be interested in a book. So Golem wasn’t exactly going to stand in my way, academically. Fine, Walzer, become a farkrimter sour-puss under Yorath and Rubella, if you must have a fall-back position. Just don’t become fanatical. And don’t allow it to interfere with your ping-pong.
Yorath and Rubella, joint Directors of Studies at Golem -inspirational figures at the time, though scarcely remembered today. Except by me, except by me, except by me … Dr Iaoin Yorath, author of The Bleeding Wound: Women and Anguish in the Nineteenth-Century Novel and its sequel, The Wound Staunched: Suffering and Redemption in the Woman’s Novel of the Nineteenth Century. And Howard Rubella (Ph.D. pending) — still is, by the way — author of nothing, but a renowned teacher and expert on marriage and parturition in literature, though he himself was single and childless. My mentors.
So, no, not Moral Sciences strictly speaking. Not Hobbes or Hume. What I was actually majoring in was Collins Classics. Somewhere along the line I had ditched misogyny (it was only ever a growing pain anyway) and returned to the faith of my aunties. Austens, Jane; Brontës, Anne; Brontës, Charlotte; Brontës, Emily; Burneys, Fanny; Eliots, George; Gaskells, Mrs; Mitfords, Miss. I had even brought the original green volumes of my boyhood down from Manchester, concealing them under my bed at first, imagining I would need to buy more grown-up-looking versions from Heffers when my grant came through. But that turned out to be an unnecessary compunction; every one of my fellow students owned the same leatherette editions I did, so I felt free to arrange them on my shelves in alphabetical order. Austens, Jane, etc.
The Mighty Walzer Page 28