He wondered what he could do. He looked about Norman’s room, and for the first time, Norman’s belongings, his clothes, his books, his dressing-table equipment, seemed out of place, as if they’d been hurriedly stuffed away until the right place had been found for them. Suddenly Rabbi Zweck knew what he had to do. He would remove Norman from Sarah’s room, or rather, he would shed Norman of his mother. Rabbi Zweck would return to the marriage bed, and Norman would be freed from his painful inheritance. That would be a good beginning, he thought, for Norman’s return.
He was glad he had decided on something, and he got up quickly from the bed, and set to work. As he rose, he felt a twinge in his upper arm, and a gradual pressure around the region of his heart, a pain that had nothing to do with sorrow. It was not the first time he’d felt it. Several times during the past few weeks, he had had the identical sensation. But always the pain passed away. He sat down again to let it take its course. It irritated him, this interference with his intentions. Pain always annoyed him, because it wasted time. He had often thought of his own death, and without any fear, but in the past few weeks, he had tried to put such thoughts out of his mind. He could not afford to die at this juncture, with everything in a state of flux and threatening to come to a head. Which is why he took no notice of his pain. It passed as he sat there, and he allowed it a little extra time. Then he stood up and planned his campaign. He thought it better to carry out the operation simultaneously, that is, to make one journey to his little room with a bundle of Norman’s things, and to return with an equal bundle of his own. That way, the rooms would each transform themselves gradually, and in the process, he would become used to his own new status.
He opened the wardrobe, and started on the clothes. Sarah’s dresses were still interspersed with Norman’s suits. He took them off the rail one by one. One of Sarah’s dress sleeves had caught in the pocket of one of Norman’s suits, not caught, Rabbi Zweck thought, as he tried to pull it out, but tucked there, as it were, deliberately. It unnerved him. this produced partnership, and more so, when he found it repeated along the line. He pulled the sleeves out of the pockets and was disturbed by his feelings of disgust. ‘Ach,’ he muttered, ‘is time already to separate them.’
He carried a pile of Norman’s clothes into his own room, and laid them on the bed. Then he collected his own for the return journey. The process took him most of the morning. He removed Norman’s clothes, books and papers, taking care not to examine the latter, and he brought back his own in kind. As the transformation took place, he felt easier and more confident in what he was doing. The last things to go were Norman’s hairbrush and toilet articles. and when he’d removed these the dressing-table with Sarah’s things took on a pleasurable familiarity. He looked in the wardrobe and saw his own clothes, hung together with hers, side ‘by side, and he made a decent division between Sarah’s lot and his own. He looked about the room, and felt pleased with himself. It was like a home-coming.
After his morning’s exertions, he was tired, and he laid himself on the bed. It was his bed now, as it had been theirs when Sarah was alive, and Norman had his own room, and that was as it should be. A slight twinge in the upper arm again, the thought of Esther and his good Bella, his memory of Sarah, seemed now all related to each other. He closed his eyes, while the pain passed. ‘I must take it easy,’ he said to himself.
As he lay there, the wardrobe door, which he had not completely shut, swung open, revealing that half which contained Sarah’s dresses, and as if a curtain had risen on an old well-loved play, Rabbi Zweck lay back and contemplated his late wife’s clothes. He knew they would conjure up memories for him, and for that reason, he skipped those that had attended events he would sooner forget. He dwelt on the better dresses, the silks and the flowered, a friend’s daughter’s wedding, a barmitzvah, a share in someone else’s happiness. Back and fore along the sleeves, his eye wandered, astonished by their powerful evocation. And each time, he skipped the brown lace cuff of a sleeve, at first, unable to find its association, but then, with an increased disturbance at each glance. He couldn’t envisage the rest of the dress. The cuff was graphic enough. and he knew that an examination of the whole could not have helped him. He didn’t want to remember anyway, so he got up and firmly closed the wardrobe door. Then he lay back on the bed.
He felt a tenseness in his body, and he noticed that for some reason, his right fist was clenched. He didn’t know when it had happened, but he’d experienced the same kind of tenseness before, and always as a prelude to some unpleasant memory. It was, in a way, a physical safeguard against any emotional reaction that memory would engender, as if he were arming himself in advance. He’d noticed of late, how acute his memory had become. The long forgotten events of his life, and usually those he had wanted to forget, would light his mind, usually sparked off by a small incident, something heard, or something seen, like the clenched fist at his side. He remembered the time when Norman had tried to leave home. Why the fist had reminded him of the incident, he could not fathom, but the logic of it, he knew, would eventually reveal itself.
It was when Norman first started to train for the Law, that it had come to a head. He had been hankering after it during his last year at school, and his parents had fobbed him off. The suggestion that Norman should leave a good home, and go and live God knows where, Mrs Zweck found outrageous. But she expressed no opinion. To have directly opposed him, would have meant that she was actually taking his suggestion seriously, and this was the last thing she wanted him to think. It was a fantastic, ridiculous idea, and she would ignore it. When Norman acknowledged that neither his father nor his mother was taking him seriously, he announced his concrete plans.
‘I’ve found a room.’ he said, one day at supper.
Mrs Zweck signalled to her husband and the girls to ignore him, and she gave them each a threatening glance which warned them that they would listen to him at their peril. It was her business, and no-one else should try to deal with it. ‘A little more soup, Abie?’ she said.
‘I’ve found a room,’ Norman said again.
‘Very nice, very nice,’ his mother said. ‘So little you have to do with your time, you run around to find rooms. Very nice. Very nice.’
‘It’s a very nice room,’ Norman said, mocking her.
‘So pleased I am,’ she said. ‘such a terrible room you’ve got in your mother’s house, you’ve got to run look for a nice room. Very nice, very nice,’ she said. ‘you should only enjoy. Now finish your supper.’ she suddenly shouted at him. ‘Enough already of your jokes.’
‘It’s not a joke,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m leaving at the end of the week.’
‘Go, go,’ she screamed. ‘Who’s stopping? I should stop you? You had enough from your mother? Go. You want I should break my heart? You want you should break up the family?’ She challenged the others with her eyes. ‘Then go,’ she shouted. ‘Go.’
‘I’d like to go with your blessing,’ he said. ‘It’s not unnatural after all, is it, Pop,’ he appealed to his more liberal father, ‘that a boy my age should want to leave home.’
‘Blessings he wants,’ Mrs Zweck was beside herself. ‘Not enough he should break the family. I should give him a blessing too. Look, my boy,’ she wagged her finger at him, ‘I don’t want to hear any more about rooms. That’s the end of it. You’ll stay in this house, you hear me? Until, please God, you get married. Then I won’t keep you,’ she said generously. ‘Then you make your own home, and plenty blessings. Now enough.’
Esther and Bella had been quiet throughout. Even if they had opinions, they knew better than to voice them. Bella instinctively and illogically sided with her mother. She was growing, by force of circumstances, into the role of family protector, and when Norman threatened her parents’ peace, she would oppose him, no matter how strong his case. Esther did not have such acute filial feelings. She had been so overloved and protected all her life, that they had never occurred to her. She saw no reason why Norman should
n’t leave home. She for one would be glad to have him gone. He fed and bred her parents’ anxiety and love to sickening point, and the house would be happier without him. Every night her mother stood over him as he did his homework, though she understood nothing of the work. She checked and rechecked that all was done, and she had to take his word for it that it was done correctly. She wouldn’t dream of going to bed until he came home, and each morning she walked with him to the bus-stop, never failing after all his eighteen years to warn him to be careful as he crossed the road. She could not for one moment believe that his life could be lived without her sanction. He was not an individual, but an appendage of herself. It was no wonder that she employed everything she had against his going.
Rabbi Zweck saw the logic of Norman’s wish, and left alone, he probably would have opposed it on principle at first, and then, with fine argument, given in. But he knew how it would break Sarah and he was too weak to gainsay her. As for Norman, there were only a few moments, like the last, of absolute decision, and yet, even then, it was probably more of a provocation than a declaration of intent. He knew he had to get out of there. His mother had smothered him long enough. Yet he was frightened, not so much of being on his own, but of what his leaving might do to the family. His mother had promised often enough over the past few months that if he went it would be the end of them all, and he could not wholly cast this possibility aside. Besides, there was David. He would probably see less of him, but perhaps that wouldn’t be such a bad idea. His closeness to his friend sometimes worried him.
‘And what about David, then?’ his mother suddenly said. not satisfied to have already had the last word. ‘How you going to live without him?’ she said, and her tone suggested that she knew more of the relationship than Norman did himself. ‘Or perhaps you will have a nice little room together?’ she sneered.
‘Enough, enough,’ Rabbi Zweck muttered, ‘let’s eat in peace.’
So they finished the meal in silence, though Mrs Zweck demonstrated with histrionic gestures, that she’d gone quite off her food. And then in case she had not made her position clear, she announced that she had to lie down.
For a few weeks, the matter was dropped. The summer holidays came and it seemed that Norman had given up his resolution. In fact, the silence that now attended the subject worried Mrs Zweck even more than its discussion. She feared that Norman would move out without a word. Every day when he was out she would go to his room and look for signs of removal. She read his letters in case a due could be found there, but she found nothing untoward in his belongings. So she made him new curtains for his room. and bought him a new reading-lamp and put up with his sullen silences. But they nagged at her, and fearing that it would all have happened before she could intercede, she brought up the subject again.
‘How is the nice rooms?’ she said one evening, as they sat in the kitchen together. Rabbi Zweck tried to silence her.
‘Momma,’ Bella said, ‘why don’t you leave well alone?’
‘What’s well about it?’ Norman said. ‘There’s nothing well about my staying here. If you were interested in my room, I’d tell you about it. But you’re all completely indifferent.’
Mrs Zweck exploded. ‘What room?’ she shouted. ‘You got another room already?’
‘I told you, Momma,’ he said patiently, ‘months ago, I told you I’d got a room, and I’m moving in there next week.’ In fact he hadn’t decided in himself when he would go. He was frightened and he kept on postponing it. But his mother was pushing him and in a way he was grateful to her.
‘Now stop all this nonsense,’ Mrs Zweck said. ‘There’ll be no more argument. You stay in this house.’ Rabbi Zweck looked at his on. He was considerably taller than any of them, and he wondered how his wife intended to keep him there.
‘If I hear another word about this room business, I’ll … I’ll …’
‘You’ll what?’ Norman dared to ask her.
But since Mrs Zweck had no idea what she would do. she covered her loss of words with a veiled threat. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘You’ll see. That’s all I’ll tell you. You’ll see and you’ll be sorry. So sorry you’ll be.’ She left it there and hoped it was having some effect. But though Norman did not take her threats too seriously, he was too dependent on her to dismiss them altogether. He went to his room. Mrs Zweck followed him and listened outside the door. She fully expected to hear the packing case come down from off the top of the wardrobe, but there was silence, and silence like argument, worried her equally. She tried to enlist the rest of the family in her sense of urgency. But they told her that she was wrong to have brought the matter up again and that she should say no more about it, and it would all blow over. But she worried desperately over his possible departure. Every day, she went to his room to see if anything had changed, and she took his suitcase and hid it in her own wardrobe. At heart she knew she couldn’t stop him, and it was this that worried her most of all.
A few weeks later, they were having supper together. The subject of Norman’s move had not been mentioned for some time, and Mrs Zweck, although checking every day on the presence of his suitcase in her wardrobe, felt easier about the whole affair. After supper, Norman went to his room, which he did almost every evening, to study. The girls washed up and Mrs Zweck got on with her knitting. It was like any other evening when they all sat together in the flat, each intent on their own occupations. Except that tonight it was very silent. Mrs Zweck wondered what Norman was doing, but fearful of provoking a scene, she refrained from going to his room. Instead, she went to the wardrobe to check that the suitcase was there. She came back to the kitchen satisfied. It was getting late. Rabbi Zweck was still reading.
‘Abie,’ she said, ‘is late. Go see what Norman is doing.’
‘He’s working. Leave him alone,’ he said.
‘Bella, go see what Norman is doing.’
‘Leave him alone,’ Rabbi Zweck said. ‘A boy can’t be on his own a while?’
She waited, restless. After a while, she got up. ‘I’ll go.’ she said. Rabbi Zweck stayed her. ‘Let him be, he’s a big boy already. Let him be himself,’ he said, as gently as he could. ‘A little independence he needs. Then he won’t be shouting always to leave home.’
She sat down again, and at the sound of Norman’s door opening, she relaxed, and took up her knitting. She got through half a row, when her fingers seemed suddenly paralysed. Without looking up. she saw his shape in the doorway, and it was as if she suffered a blackout. It was his overcoat, filling the door-frame, that momentarily blinded her. She daren’t look him in the face, so she lowered her eyes to his feet, and there beside him, was an old suitcase that she had never seen before. She looked at her son, put her hand to her heart, and brought out one of a stock of ready-made moans. Rabbi Zweck stared at Norman. He wished that if he were so bent on going, he would have gone when they were all out, when no-one would attempt to stop him. ‘you going out?’ he said softly.
‘I’m leaving,’ Norman said. ‘I’m not going away for ever.’ he added, between his mother’s moans. ‘I’ll come back and see you.’ He too now wished he had gone without leave-taking, and he felt himself weaken before his mother’s blackmail. There was nothing to stop him picking up his case and getting out, but he was rooted there, cursing her groaning. Then she spoke, after a deeply-drawn stuttered sigh. ‘What for you wait?’ she said. ‘My blessings you waiting for?’ She stood up and went towards him. Esther tried to stop her. ‘Let him go,’ she whispered.
‘Another one,’ Mrs Zweck turned on her. ‘Are you also thinking of going? You see,’ she yelled triumphantly at Norman, ‘how the family is finished? You can do this to your mother and father? To send us both to an early grave?’
Rabbi Zweck looked at her helplessly. Logically, Norman’s leaving was at the worst, upsetting. He knew it wasn’t going to kill anybody. But he wasn’t too sure of Sarah. Her whole life had been built around Norman, until Norman as a person had been swallowed whole. She
would die a little if he left. Of that there was no question. He looked at Norman and saw the beginnings of surrender in him. He wanted to take his side, but he was afraid and for the first time in his married life, he did not like his wife. His own non-participation annoyed him; Bella too had opted out. Only Esther had made the slightest protest. There they sat, timid and neutral. Sarah had colonised them all.
‘All right then,’ he heard Norman say. ‘I’ll stay.’
He looked at his son and he was filled with an overwhelming pity, for the weakness that he had inherited from himself. He wanted to smile at him, but it might have been mistaken for a smile of triumph. So he looked at him and tried to convey that he had understood the damage that his wife had done. He heard Sarah give a scream of relief, and then, to give her relief expression, she raised her hand to strike him, partly to unburden herself, and partly to make sure that her son would never have such thoughts again. Rabbi Zweck jumped automatically to his feet and stayed her hand mid-air. He clenched his fist around the cuff of her sleeve, and placed her arm at her side.
Rabbi Zweck sat up on the bed. He saw his fist opening, and in a flash he knew the memory of the lace cuff on the dress. The recollection of the incident had saddened him. He wondered how responsible it was for Norman’s present condition. But who knew when it began, or why it had happened at all.
He heard Bella coming upstairs from the shop, and he was glad that he was not alone.
Chapter 15
That night, the first night in many years that he had lain in his marriage bed, Rabbi Zweck was taken ill. At first, he would not acknowledge it. The pain in the upper arm and around the heart, had become so familiar that he had accepted it as part of the ageing process that was inevitable. Moreover, he felt that if he ignored it, it would cease to exist. But this time he was frightened. Tentatively, he moved his legs to the empty side of his unfamiliarly large bed, and he felt very alone. He thought of calling for Bella, but he doubted whether he had enough strength to make himself heard. He lay quite still, as the pain intensified.
The Elected Member Page 17