The Elected Member

by Bernice Rubens

  Almost as soon as he shut his eyes, he saw Norman smiling at him. He knew he was dreaming, but he held on to his sleep, and the heartening image that it had delivered.

  ‘Pop,’ Norman said, ‘look what I’ve got for you.’ He was sitting up in his bed, smiling, his hands underneath the blankets, hiding something. ‘Turn around,’ he said, ‘and don’t look till I tell you,’ he said. ‘It’s a surprise.’ Rabbi Zweck turned from the bed and looked around the ward. It was empty except for one bed at the far end of the room by the door. Propped up on the pillow was a lampshade reading a book, and the light flickered on and off as it turned the pages. ‘Now.’ Norman shouted behind him, Rabbi Zweck turned round. Propped on the bed was a waste-paper basket. Norman clasped it proudly. ‘I made it,’ he said. ‘I made it for you, Pop.’ Rabbi Zweck took the waste-paper basket from him. ‘I can’t lift it,’ he said. ‘Is very heavy.’ Norman laughed and snuggled down between the sheets. As he did so, the basket rolled off onto the floor.

  ‘Of course you can’t lift it,’ Norman said. ‘It’s full.’ Rabbi Zweck looked at the basket on the floor. It was indeed full.

  It was full of Billy.

  Rabbi Zweck woke up. Not with a start, but slowly, and without any firm conviction that it had only been a dream.

  He quickly orientated himself to his whereabouts, and he was angry that he had not been attended to. He got up and made his way to the foot of the stairs. ‘Hullo, hullo,’ he shouted. He was astonished at the panic in his voice.

  He knew that his short sleep had frightened him, but he couldn’t remember why. He was only conscious of a hangover of intense anger. He mounted two steps. ‘Hullo,’ he shouted again. He heard a rustling at the top of the stairs and he retreated quickly back to his chair. He tried to remember what he had rehearsed for the doctor, but it had gone completely.

  He regretted his angry outburst. It was a bad beginning. He tried to appear casual, turning his back on the stair-way. He heard more movements from the upper floor.

  and idly he picked up a magazine and flicked over the pages. He saw picture after picture of naked girls, and he felt he was still dreaming. Such pictures could never inhabit a doctor’s waiting room. He had to pull himself together. He threw the magazine down in disgust. He was prepared to acknowledge that it hadn’t been there, that he hadn’t seen it, that he’d never come to this place, and that he’d better and erase the whole happening from his mind. He walked towards the outer corridor.

  ‘Yes?’ a voice said behind him.

  He looked around. At the foot of the stairs, draped over the bannister, in an attitude of utter fatigue, was a woman. To Rabbi Zweck, she seemed to have emerged hurriedly. He stared at her. He waited for her to speak again, for he was still not confident of his own full consciousness, and he was not sure that he had completely shaken off his terrifying sleep. ‘yes?’ she said again.

  ‘Is about my son,’ he said.

  ‘Come up,’ she said. She turned languidly and slouched wearily up the stairs. As she neared the top, she turned around, and saw him still standing there. ‘Come on then,’ she said. ‘We haven’t got all night.’

  He moved, bewildered. He assumed that the woman was the doctor’s wife, or perhaps his assistant and that the doctor’s surgery was on the next floor. But he was disturbed by the woman’s appearance. It was unclean. And those magazines. They too, had nothing to do with medicine. But he followed her, hanging on to the bannister and quickening his pace as she threatened to disappear into the darkness. At the top of the stairs, he had to grope his way behind her. Then a beam of light flushed the darkness. She had opened a door and she stood aside for him to pass through. He moved into the light and hesitated on the threshold. Facing him was an unmade bed, a broken lampshade, and a heap of clothes on a chair. ‘After you.’ she said, with exaggerated politeness.

  Rabbi Zweck had now given up all hope of seeing a doctor, but he still managed to shut out the truth of the situation from his mind. He went inside. The room was smaller than he had expected. In fact, most of its space was taken up by the bed he had already seen. Otherwise, there was a small chest of drawers, another chair, and in the corner, a dirty sink. He fastened his eyes on the bowl of the sink, hoping to get a grip on himself. He saw a long black single hair, and he followed its length to the sink hole. He wanted very much to be sick. The woman closed the door behind her.

  ‘Doctor,’ he said, and it sounded ridiculous, ‘is about my son.’

  ‘What’s this doctor, son business?’ she said. She seemed to have woken up a little. She took a dirty hair brush from off the bed and tugged it through her hair.

  ‘You are not a doctor,’ Rabbi Zweck stated rather than questioned. He wanted to convince her that it had all been a mistake.

  ‘Do I look like a doctor?’ she said smiling. She could see his distress. ‘What is it?’ she said, going across to him. He did not back away, as he would have expected of himself.

  Instead, he was overwhelmingly grateful for her concern.

  He wanted to sit down and cry it all out, the weary story of why he had come, of Norman in hospital, of Billy in the next bed, of Billy’s mother, weeping at the busstop, but most of all, he wanted to cry out his own shame.

  He moved towards the unladen chair, and made to sit down. She grabbed him by the shoulders, laughing. ‘It’s broken,’ she said, ‘that one. Come and sit on the bed.’

  He let himself be led across to the bed, and he sank down wearily, feeling no repulsion at the dirty sheets and the pile of worn clothing strewn over the bundled blankets. She stood over him and made no move to sit down. He noticed for the first time, that she was wearing a dressing-gown, and he smiled to himself as he watched her pick up the ends of the belt, and make a double knot. He saw it was a gesture of respect, and he was grateful for it.

  ‘What is it?’ she said, ‘this son of yours? What’s the matter with him?’

  He didn’t hear her question. He was looking at the cleavage between the lapels of her dressing-gown. In spite of the double knot she had tied at her waist, the gown fell open around the breasts. Rabbi Zweck stared at them. She was not young. She reminded him reluctantly of Sarah.

  because he knew of no other comparison. The wrinkled skin on her neck puckered down her chest and small clusters of black spots occasionally flattened the creases. He could smell her, with a distinct mixture of smells that he had known long ago, and which now came back to him with exciting nostalgia. First, his poor Sarah, God rest her soul, as she came out of a bath, and then with distinct association, the smell of the stables where he and his elder brothers had, years ago, washed down his father’s horses.

  The servant smell from the attic rooms, in preparation for the evening out, she embodied them all, this woman who now bent over him, and nostalgia blunted the edge of his disgust. ‘My son,’ he started again.

  ‘Yes, and what about your son?’ There was a slight hint of impatience in her voice. ‘Let’s get him over with.’ She bent down farther, so that one breast fell out of her dressing gown. Rabbi Zweck watched it emerge without surprise.

  He looked at it closely. It looked as if it needed ironing. He thought of the pictures in the magazine downstairs, but thiS flesh had nothing to do with those glossy swellings. Those had disgusted him. But this was different. Perhaps once her breast had been full and round, but now it was a deflated appendage, and its exposure had been accidental.

  He raised his hand and noticed that he still had his gloves on. Slowly he pulled one off, finger by finger, and then he cupped the loose breast in his hand, and he put it away. Then he replaced his glove and folded his hands in his lap.

  ‘You’re quite a dirty old man, aren’t you,’ she said, straightening herself.

  ‘I …” he began, but he realised there was no point in an explanation. For a moment, while sitting on the bed, he had felt more relaxed than he could remember for a long time, and she had broken it for him. Now he could not help but look upon her for what she was, and
he felt sickened that Norman had had dealings with her. ‘Why did he come to you, my son?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m the Citizens Advice Bureau,’ she said disdainfully.

  ‘What d’you think he came to see me for? Why have you come, anyway. That would be more to the point.’

  Rabbi Zweck got up from the bed. He wanted to get away. It had been a fruitless journey and a shameful one. But the woman seemed in no hurry for him to go. She went across to the rickety chair and sat down on it carefully, leaning backwards and spreading her legs wide to adjust her balance.

  The dressing-gown fell open both below and above the double knot of her belt. Her legs were shaved to the knees, but above, to the top of her thighs, the mottled skin was covered with straggly hair. The manner in which she sat was not a gesture of invitation; it was clearly the only way the broken chair could be accommodated. But Rabbi Zweck could no longer look upon it as a matter of convenience. As far as the breast was concerned, he had only put it back for tidiness sake, and he had taken his glove off because you didn’t touch things with your gloves on. But he didn’t want to tidy her up as she sat there. He liked it, the way she was, and he was sick with shame that she so excited him. Not for many, many years, and perhaps, he thought to himself, never in his life, had such hungry tremblings entered his body. He made no attempt to control them, and they were intensified by his own shame. He looked around the room, and found pleasure in the dirty sheets, in the pile of worn clothing on the bed, and in the disgusting filth of the woman’s body.

  ‘What was your son’s name?’ the woman said.

  ‘Was? Was?’ Rabbi Zweck asked. ‘He is, he is, my son.’

  ‘What is his name then?’

  ‘Henry,’ Rabbi Zweck said quickly. He was astonished at how quickly the name had come to him. It was the name of one of the young assistants he’d had in the shop, whom he’d had to sack because he was always touching Bella. ‘I don’t know a Henry,’ the woman said. ‘In any case, they never tell me their real names.’

  Rabbi Zweck wondered what name Norman had used, and what name he himself would use if she were to ask him. He found himself moving towards her, and as he neared her, he realised for the first time, that, in spite of a life-time of rigid self discipline, he had never known temptation. Over the years, he had denied himself, for the sake of family and for the sake of principle, but it had never meant any particular hardship for him. Now for the first time, he knew temptation, and it was his body that threatened to betray him. ‘Oh God.’ he muttered to himself, hesitating in his steps. ‘I’m an old man. For so long I live without, for so long I never even wanted. Why now should I want?’ He felt himself sweating. He stood still. He was in no hurry to reach her. Temptation had a sweet joy, that he was savouring for the first time. He wondered how many other joys had been denied him. All the circumstances of his life, his dead wife, Bella, his married daughter, and his lunatic son, all had obligingly faded from his mind; all he was aware of was his steaming body. He moved to her side.

  ‘What’s your son look like?’ the woman said. ‘I probably know which one he is. I only oblige a few customers.’

  Her question froze him. For a short while, while his body had held dominion, all else had lost its sway, and now, with her reminder, he saw Norman in the hospital bed, the small square of paper in his dressing-gown, and the woman’s room which was here and now that had to be dealt with. He backed away from her, horrified by the thought that he might have shared her with his son, and the lust that had lately licked through his body, now tongued it with shame. His knees watered with his humiliation. He touched the woman’s shoulder. She was blameless.

  From time to time, she had made his Norman happy, and for that he thanked her.

  ‘I’ll go,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. A mistake. We all make mistakes. Is my fault,’ he said, seeing her questioning look. ‘Someone else I thought you were. But is not you.’

  He walked towards the door and turned around. ‘You are kind,’ he said. ‘Very kind. I’m sorry, but is a mistake I made.’ He opened the door, and left it ajar, so that the light from the room would guide him down the dark stairs.

  He went as quickly as he could through the waiting-room, and down the corridor to the front door.

  Breathlessly, he mounted the basement steps, and once in the clean fresh air outside, he leaned against the railings and tried to cope with the cooling of his body and the heat of his shame. He panted there for a while, then wearily walked away. He walked close to the wall, his shame stabbing him, and he tightened the muscles of his neck, so that a fierce grin spread over his face and with the grimace, he uttered a low animal cry disassociating his shame from his own being. He hurried to the busstop. Once on the bus, he would be able to concentrate on the other passengers, on the passing shop windows, on paying his fare, and perhaps even talking to whoever sat next to him.

  The bus came mercifully soon. He went inside where there were more people, and he took a seat next to an old man. But at the next stop, the old man got off, and Rabbi Zweck was left sitting alone and staring out of the window.

  There were no shops on the bus route, and few people in the streets, and the bus emptying with every stop. Walking was better for taking your mind off things, than sitting alone with nothing to see and no-one to talk to. ‘Ach,’ he said aloud, ‘what is happening with me. And Norman,’ he muttered, ‘what is happening.’ One or two people turned to look at him, but could find no meaning in his mumblings.

  They only saw his distress, and turned quickly away. ‘Why my son,’ he mumbled, ‘why my son should go to such a woman? A nafka,’ he had to say the word. There was only one word for her. It was one of the cards he had to put on the table. And alongside it, he had to put his son. ‘My son and a nafka,’ he muttered. ‘Why, why? He couldn’t get a nice Yiddische girl?’ he asked plaintively. ‘Is something wrong with my son he has to pay for it? For pills, for whores he pays. Oi,’ he sighed, ‘such a life, such a miserable life.’

  He leaned back in his seat and shut his eyes. He would soon be home, with his good Bella. He had blessings, after all. Should he not count them. He dozed until he reached his stop. As he left the bus, he felt people looking at him.

  He didn’t care. ‘My good Bella.’ he kept saying to himself.

  It was an anchor that would tide him home.

  He put his key in the door. Bella was waiting up for him. Rabbi Zweck was not a demonstrative man, but he rushed to her and held her in his arms.

  ‘Are you all right, Poppa?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, good, good.’

  ‘How was Mrs Golden?’

  ‘Mrs Golden?’ He had entirely forgotten his excuse. ‘Oh, well, well. Like she always is. Is hot water for a bath?’ he said quickly.

  ‘I’ll get it ready.’ Bella said.

  In the bathroom, he noted the dean towel, freshly laundered and laid out for him, the steaming water, his dressing-gown and slippers ready. They were all blessings.

  One day, please God, Norman would be home again. So what if he goes now and then with a nafka?

  He took off his clothes. He ignored his body as he stepped into the bath. For many years now, he had been indifferent to his flesh, but tonight he positively avoided looking at it. He wanted to wash it clean. Not from her.

  No. He thanked her for what she had been able to give his son. It was not her filth and smell that he would rub away. That was hers, and she had earned it in her honest way. He himself had to be clean to earn his blessings.

  Chapter 12

  It was the commotion in the ward, the scurry of feet, the cheers and boos of the patients, the overall discord that nudged Norman’s sleep. He tossed and groaned a little, then woke, sweating. In his first few days in hospital, he would wake up and wonder where he was and why he was there. He would take his time to realise his whereabouts, because he knew somewhere in his mind that they were distasteful. Then after a week, he awoke in full knowledge of where he was. And it pained him less. He had an unlimite
d supply of white, and Bella was always good for a touch. He really had nothing to worry about. Not even to get out of the place worried him any more. He recapped the time he had been there. He no longer counted it in days, like in the beginning. It was about a month, and he was indifferent as to whether it was more or less. It was a life that could be led as long as the white was there.

  Only one thing recently had nagged at him. He had begun to see them again. In the night when he could not sleep, he’d asked for a sleeping pill to wipe them away. But he knew while he was sleeping that they were still there. At first he thought he must have brought them in with him on his body, and he feared that the nurses would tell him off for his social indiscretion. He’d asked Billy about them, but Billy couldn’t see them. But then, what did Billy know? He was madder than all of them. Minister saw them. or at least he said he saw them, along with lots of other things that even Norman, with his heightened perception could not decipher.

  Minister could see their droppings and he said they were enormous. Cow-pads, they were, he said, and how could all these insensitive bastards in the ward, stand the smell of them. He’d kicked them away with his foot, and he’d gone raving around the domestics, yelling at them to clean the bloody place up. He’d threatened to report the whole lot of them to the Cabinet, and have them expelled from the Party. That was over a week ago. They’d put him to sleep, and he was still sleeping. That worried Norman too. He lay there, irritated by the commotion around him. yet too concerned with his own problem to sit up and see what it was all about. What worried him was the continuation of his supply. When Minister went into his sleep, he’d left Norman with a week’s worth of white. Tomorrow, his supply would be exhausted. He dare not think of how he’d get through the day, or the next, or the next, if Minister didn’t wake up. He began to hate him. ‘Cow-pads,’ he spat contemptuously, ‘Cow-pads in the middle of a hospital ward. Lunatic. They ought to put him away.’