Rabbi Zweck took her hand. ‘You stay a little here?’ he said. ‘You don’t have to rush home?’
‘This is home,’ she said gently. ‘I’m not going back. I’m staying with you and Bella.’
Auntie Sadie sighed. ‘Just like the old days it’ll be. You’ll be better, Abie, and Norman will come home, and why not,’ she said, ‘a little happiness for us all.’
Nobody questioned Esther’s decision, and she was grateful for it. ‘Tomorrow we’ll all go and see Norman,’ she said. It would be her last hurdle home.
Chapter 18
Nobody at the hospital had informed Norman’s home of his latest breakdown. Had Bella telephoned. she would have been issued with the standard communique that he was under sedation, which was their euphemism for his hooliganism and their inability to cope with it. Rabbi Zweck was excited at the prospect of a visit. It was over a month since he had seen Norman, and this time, he was bringing special visitors. It would be quite a family reunion and he had high hopes of it. Esther was nervous. She had no idea what she would say to him. She shrank from the neatness and uniformity of his confines, and she pitied him. She could make no preparation for their meeting. She would have to wait for his reactions to her, and they might well be hostile. Rabbi Zweck led the way along the corridor, like a guide, nodding to some of the familiar faces. ‘In the ward at the bottom,’ he said, turning back to them. ‘Come, let’s go inside.’ He stood aside to let them go through. ‘Such a surprise he’ll have. He wanted to wait by the door, as a spectator, to see Norman’s reaction to Esther, and as he waited, the nurse on duty went over to him. ‘Rabbi Zweck,’ he said gently, ‘could you come into my room a moment?’
Rabbi Zweck trembled and followed him. ‘Is something the matter?’ he said. His voice was timid, as if admitting some responsibility.
‘Sit down,’ McPherson said. ‘It’s nothing serious. It’s just that yesterday we had a little trouble in the ward,’ he did not want to mention Minister’s death, ‘and a number of patients were upset by it. Norman had a slight breakdown so we put him under sedation again. He was doing so well, it’s a pity. It’s a bit of a set-back for him. But there’s no need to upset yourself. It’s only temporary and he’ll be on the mend again shortly.’
Rabbi Zweck’s reaction was one of anger. ‘He should be at home,’ he said. ‘He hasn’t got enough trouble, he should be upset by other people. I take him home,’ he said defiantly.
‘That’s impossible,’ McPherson said. ‘He’s committed in any case for another three weeks. We would only have to bring him back.’
Rabbi Zweck shuddered at the recollection of his first journey to the hospital with Norman; he couldn’t endure another. ‘Can we sit with him?’ he asked timidly. He was angry at his own abdication. So often since Norman’s illness he had felt the same anger when he had been obliged to bow to an authority he did not trust, because, his own ignorance made him powerless.
He felt a slight twinge in his arm, the old familiar pain. But he was not afraid. His weapon was his love which he was now turning in on himself.
‘Go and sit by his bed,’ McPherson said. ‘You can talk to him a little, but you’ll find him very drowsy.’
Rabbi Zweck went into Norman’s ward. Bella was sitting at the bottom of the bed, and Auntie Sadie was peering into his face. She had come to see him, and see him she would. Esther stood on one side. She had been dreading the meeting, and now she was half relieved, that it was postponed. She could gradually get used to him, until perhaps there would be no need for words at all. He looked very young while he slept, she thought, and innocent of all the hurt he had done them. She saw that his hair had thinned, but his face in repose was unlined and peaceful.
She was curious about his body and though she never remembered seeing it, even as a young child, its contours suddenly became important to her. She needed to see it to confirm the years that had parted them, for for a moment she had lost all sense of their separation. She brought a chair for her father as he came over, and she stood apart from them, staring at Norman’s inert body, and inwardly she wept for what they had all been reduced to.
Rabbi Zweck leaned over the bed, and touched Norman’s shoulder. ‘Norman,’ he said, ‘is Poppa. Poppa’s come to see you. Who says I’m ill? I’m here by your bed. Is Poppa, Nor-man. Say hullo to your Poppa.’ He shook him slightly, and Auntie Sadie tried to stay his hand. None of them could bear to look at his face. ‘Poppa is here,’ he said again. ‘So well I am. You shouldn’t worry I was ill. You hear me, Norman?’
‘He knows you’re here,’ Bella said. ‘Don’t aggravate yourself.’
‘Norman,’ he tried again, but Esther pulled him back gently into his chair. ‘Rest Poppa,’ she said, then looking at the others, ‘I don’t see any point in this.’ She was suddenly irritated by their despair. Norman lay there motion-less and withdrawn, yet his power over the figures around him was irrefutable, and she wanted to beat him into consciousness and show him what he had done. ‘How d’you stand it, Bella?’ she said. ‘How can you be so calm?’ ‘I’ve had lots of rehearsals,’ she said. ‘You get used to it after a time.’ She smiled at her sister. Already she felt the relief of sharing the burden and suddenly it seemed not a burden at all.
Rabbi Zweck turned away from the bed, and as he did so, he saw a familiar face sitting up in the bed alongside. He was staring across the ward with a look that reminded Rabbi Zweck of his first visit to the hospital. He looked at the bed opposite and it was empty. That’s where the stare had first come from, that insolent upright face opposite Norman’s bed. He did not know why. but he shivered at its absence. It had become a familiar sight in the ward, and he was frightened by the disappearance of a known and recognised feature of Norman’s new abode. He had felt the same fear when one day, Billy was no longer there. Now this man, staring in the bed alongside Norman, was vainly trying to keep up the old appearance of the ward, but he wore the look like an ill-fitting inheritance. ‘Where’s Minister?’ Rabbi Zweck shouted, suddenly recalling the name of the absentee. A few patients in the ward turned to look at him, and as Rabbi Zweck stared back, he noticed that not one single face was familiar, that everything in fact had changed in the ward, but for his heap of son lying in sad and stubborn permanence.
He remembered the familiarity of the face sitting up in the bed, and he turned round, desperate to communicate with it, to find some common ground that it might share with Norman. The face smiled at him, and the smile too was familiar, an unaimed affable affair, that flickered on and off like a dying lamp. It was Billy and Rabbi Zweck was overjoyed to see him. Not all of them had gone and left his sleeping son. Billy was there holding the front and he would leave the ward only when Norman was ready to go. ‘William?’ he said. 'You remember me? It’s a long time I haven’t seen you. Are you better?’
‘I came back this morning?’ Billy smiled. ‘Yes, I’m better.’
‘Is your mother coming today?’ Rabbi Zweck hoped so. They too could lend familiarity to the place. They too would stay until all could leave together. ‘So glad I am to see you,’ Rabbi Zweck said. He went close to the bed. ‘William,’ he whispered, ‘what happened to Minister?’
‘He’s dead,’ he said. ‘Yesterday he did himself in. Pity.’ Rabbi Zweck shivered. He thought of Minister’s parents, if he had any, and pitied them, and he was angry with himself that he had disliked him. But at the same time, he found him cursing Minister for having shocked his own son into a deep sleep. He tried in his own sorrow to weep for others but he couldn’t, and he was ashamed of his loss of compassion. But William was real and alive, though god knows what rot his mind had reaped from his years of sojourn in this place. ‘When he wakes up, my son,’ he said to himself, ‘I take him home. No matter what. We take him home.’
He went back to Norman’s bed. Auntie Sadie was stroking Norman’s forehead. Occasionally he stirred and groaned. Bella rested her hand on the lopsided tent his legs had made, and Esther stood apart, sickened by it all. �
��I don’t see the point in staying,’ she suddenly said.
‘Sit a minute, Esther,’ her father said. He was loath to leave Norman. He harboured vague hopes that Norman would wake, just long enough to see him there, and to know that he was not ill. Yet he knew that he was ill. He had felt progressively worse since coming there, and the news of Minister’s death had stabbed him with yet another pain. ‘I am close, I am close,’ he muttered to himself. He wanted to stay by Norman, not for Norman’s sake, but for his own, for he felt that soon enough, they would be parted for ever. ‘Sit a little, Esther,’ he said, patting the end of the bed.
She came and sat near him. There was nothing they could say to each other, transfixed as they were by the sleeping figure, afraid to interrupt his silent prone power.
‘Is good he’s sleeping,’ Auntie Sadie whispered. ‘We’ll sit a little, and we’ll go home and make a nice lemon tea. Then we make arrangements he should come home. His Auntie Sadie should look after him. Won’t she, Norman,’ she said, stroking his forehead once more. ‘Such a baby he looks.’ Yes, they were all babies, Rabbi Zweck thought. He looked at his two daughters, and saw them innocent and dependent as children, and he knew again that he was leaving them, and all he could bequeath was the heap on the bed. ‘Norman, wake up,’ he whispered desperately, ‘wake up before I go.’
Norman turned fitfully in his sleep, and Rabbi Zweck leaned forward in his chair. But Norman settled again, his head upright on the pillow, his chin thrust forward proudly. His look of tranquillity willed them to stay by his side. So they sat there, on guard and watched him in silence.
A black shadow was beating on Norman’s brow, and he wished to god it would go away. He tried to call out but his mouth was stiff and dry. He tried to raise his hands to wipe it away, but they had melted inseverable into his sides.
He lay there helpless while the beating black shadow filtered into his brain, and the hammering began. He wondered how such nebulous stuff as shadow could beat with such precise and insistent rhythm, and how it could make any impression on the stuff his brain was made of. And so he concluded that his brain had turned to foam. He tried again to beat his hand on his brow, but he had to acknowledge that he had lost sway over his body, that it was now in other hands.
The foam swelled to the opposite wall of the ward, and there were several shadows in the swell. and he smiled to see that they were drowning. For a moment the hammering stopped, until a black shadow stained the foam with the promise of a glass of lemon tea. His hands were free again, and he drowned her because her solicitude was familiar and painful. The foam swelled back to his own wall, and the shadows broke on his mind like flotsam. was one that Norman desperately wanted to save, but he couldn’t with-out saving them all. But he only wanted that one, that one dark shadow that sunk lower than all the rest, that weak one, that good one that he needed so desperately to keep alive, just long enough for the terrible tide to ebb. So he saved them all, and the small shadow swelled with gratitude. ‘Don’t aggravate,’ he heard. That was his mother with her aggravation, but he couldn’t find her shadow anywhere. He was worried that he had overlooked it in the general wreckage of his mind. He felt it pinning him down like an anchor, but he could find no trace of it. The hammering started again, and again his hands clung to him. He forced a swelling of the foam again, and this time it got bigger and bigger, until he realised with sickening gloom, that once more it was beyond his control. He watched it swell to the limits of the walls of the ward, hammering at his skull in its spreading. He waited for it to reach its peak, because he knew that then the pain would subside, but the tide withdrew before its fulfillment, like a wave that changes its mind about breaking, like an orgasm that thwarts itself, and the swell shrank, but the pain was no less. But as it neared him again, back to his own self and his own wall, it took on a greater swelling. Break, break, for god’s sake, he tried to call out. ‘I am closer, closer,’ he heard his father say, and he feared the tide would overwhelm them all. Then suddenly it broke on the jagged corners of his mind, and he felt no pain. All the shadows had gone, and the hammering had stopped. He felt the gentle foam rippling into his eyes and he saw that it had turned to red. His eyes were bleeding tears, and the silver-fish slithered into the dryness of his throat where they struggled and died. And then the hammering started again and the foam burst the opposite wall. He had to. keep away from the swell, so he shrank from it, smaller and smaller, until he was a tiny pinpoint separate on a raft, and he looked across at the wreckage with the elation of a survivor. Then a shadow loomed at his side. ‘I don’t see the point in staying,’ he heard. ‘Go, go,’ Norman tried to call, and he pushed it overboard. He wanted to get back into the swell again. It was safer there, steeped in his own self-built havoc, and he fought his way into the foam as it swelled from wall to wall. He struggled to the surface, lifting his head high, and with his chin thrust forward, the shadows were invisible.
Rabbi Zweck looked at his son’s face and he was satisfied that he knew he was there. He saw Billy’s parents come in through the door and he felt an immediate warmth towards them. They too were glad to be back in familiar surroundings. Over the past month, their visits with Billy had been silent too, but surrounded by more blatant lunacy than here. They looked at the heap of Norman on the bed, and silently transmitted their sympathy. ‘Not well again?’ Billy’s mother said.
‘Is all right,’ Rabbi Zweck answered quickly. ‘Just asleep he is. A couple weeks he sleeps, then is everything all right.’ He was sickened by his own optimism. ‘Your son is back, I see.’ ‘Yes,’ his mother said. ‘He had a nasty turn. But we’re all right now, aren’t we,’ she said, patting Billy on the head. ‘Back to work next week, aren’t we,’ she said, ‘with your poor mother running short of stock for her bazaar.’
Billy smiled in her direction, and shook hands with his father. Rabbi Zweck was moved by the formality of the gesture. It gave back to each of them the dignity that the mother was forever trying to snatch away.
Rabbi Zweck introduced his family. He remembered the initial hostility he’d felt for these two people, and he bitterly regretted his contempt. So now he wanted to make amends, and what better way than by donating his family to them. He settled them around Billy’s bed, where they were all grateful for the conversation and activity, and then he returned to Norman and sat there and watched. He felt for Norman’s hand underneath the sheet and he held it in his own. As he gripped it, he felt a definite response, and his heart filled with overwhelming joy. ‘Is Poppa, Norman,’ he whispered. ‘Together we are.’ He squeezed his son’s hand, and again the same response and he thought his joy would break him. Then he felt a stab of pain in his back, and he fell forward onto the bed, groaning.
Bella rushed to her father’s side, while Auntie Sadie, summoning up the situation in one glance, ran outside the ward to fetch help. Esther remained at Billy’s bedside, unable to move. Auntie Sadie returned with McPherson and two men carrying a stretcher. Gently they gathered him up and laid him down, still groaning a little, though the pain had eased. Then they carried him towards the door of the ward. Auntie Sadie walked alongside, and Bella followed. ‘Come,’ she said, turning to Esther, her hand outstretched. She was suddenly sorry for her. She had missed out on the living, if you could call it that; the twin harvests of her forgiveness lay inert and incommunicable. She took Bella’s hand, like a novice.
As they neared the door, Rabbi Zweck gesticulated with his hands, and the stretcher-bearers stopped, while McPherson bent his ear to hear what Rabbi Zweck was trying to say. Then whether he had heard it or not, with supreme understanding, he ordered the bearers to turn the stretcher around, so that Rabbi Zweck could see his son for the last time. Bella and Esther held their father’s hands, while he stared fixedly at everything in the world that he would bequeath them. It was all that he had to live for, and he loved it now with a love that was killing him.
Chapter 19
They took him to a small private room at the end of the corr
idor. They laid him on the bed, watching and waiting until the doctor arrived. He wanted to speak to them and they tried to quieten him.
‘Save your strength,’ Auntie Sadie said.
‘For what?’ they heard him say. Then, ‘Thank you,’ he murmured, trying to locate McPherson among the figures around his bed.
‘When’s the doctor coming,’ Esther said, unwilling to acknowledge the natural consequences of the situation. She saw how Bella had already accepted it, holding her father’s hand as she would do until the end. They saw him smile suddenly, and Auntie Sadie stroked his forehead. ‘Such a place I should die in,’ he murmured. ‘Who is meshugga, after all?’
They tried to silence him, but he would have his say. He gestured to them to come close, and they each held some part of him, pumping his hands and shoulders as if to inject their own lives into him. ‘Bella,’ he whispered, ‘Esther, Sadie, come. Say with me the Shema.’ Bella had already accepted her father’s death with a calculated storing of her grief. And for Auntie Sadie, this kind of scene almost inevitably marked the termination of her employment. So neither of them shrank from Rabbi Zweck’s request. It was Esther who refused to comply.
‘Poppa,’ she said, ‘there’s no need. You will live. Don’t give in. You’ll get over it, like the last attack.’
‘Is like Norman,’ he said quietly. ‘Norman also will get over it, and then again it starts. Often enough I have been dying. I’m tired already. Please say with me the Shema. Bellale, you begin.’
It was a reversal of the roles they had played all their lives, when he had been their teacher and had led them. Now he was asking Bella to lead him. It was his way of appointing her as his heir, for who after all was the head of the family, if not the one who led them in prayer. ‘Shema,’ Bella said softly.
The Elected Member Page 22