Rabbi Zweck repeated it after her, and Sadie joined in.
‘No, please no,’ Esther tried to interrupt.
‘Say it, Esther; Rabbi Zweck said. ‘You’ll feel better.’ The words dried on her lips, but she managed to mouth the final abdication. ‘Shema Yisroel,’ he said, and his voice became stronger, leading as of old, the chorus of his flock, ‘adonai elohanu, adonai echod.’
‘Hear O Israel,’ Auntie Sadie said, possibly for the benefit of McPherson, who stood at the foot-of the bed, sad and bewildered. ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord thy God, the Lord is One.’
And McPherson repeated it after her. He too wanted to abide by Rabbi Zweck’s passing.
None of them noticed the doctor come in. His visit had by now become an irrelevancy. They watched him dis. passionately as he came over to the bed. They withdrew their hands that held him, and made room for the cold instrument he placed on their father’s chest.
‘Let it be, let it be,’ Rabbi Zweck muttered. ‘It has heard my Shema. It agrees.’ A faint smile crossed his face. ‘And thank you,’ he added.
The doctor took the stethescope away. He looked at Bella, the only one outside Rabbi Zweck’s line of vision, and he shook his head. She nodded and thanked him. He took McPherson to the door, spoke to him in whispers, then he left without looking behind him.
The three women approached the bed again and held him. ‘I sleep now,’ he said. He sensed the acute melancholy gathered around him. ‘I sleep a little,’ he amended. He rested his head sideways on the pillow and closed his eyes.
They heard him muttering, and Bella bent close. ‘Sarah,’ she heard, and the name was repeated. And then, rather hoarsely, ‘Norman, forgive me,’ he said. ‘Forgive. Is all my fault.’ He opened his eyes again and he saw what he was leaving. Two sad unmarried daughters, one with her earnest scheitel, and in another room, his broken son. ‘I failed,’ he muttered. ‘Forgive.’
He closed his eyes again, and they knew it was now only a matter of waiting. But they held his hands still, until they could be sure that he was alone.
McPherson left the room, not so much out of respect for their privacy, but because, had he stayed, the sobs that were shaking him, could have broken and disturbed their serenity. He had met Rabbi Zweck only a few times during his visits, but he had been infinitely moved by his bewilderment, his childish optimism, his unswerving faith. Now he was dying, and though it was a fearless death, it was not a peaceful one. Rabbi Zweck knew well the chaos he was leaving behind, and he blamed himself for it.
Inside the room, they waited. It had been a long afternoon of watching and waiting. At Norman’s bedside, every movement of his face, the slightest twitch of his body was noted and responded to. Here, the body was still, undisturbed by the light irregular breathing. They counted each breath as he exhaled and waited trembling for the next. Each in their own minds gave him a certain number of breaths more, and if he could conquer that number, then he could survive.
Esther began to weep, and Bella comforted her, as she had done with Norman when her mother had died. It was her strength to comfort and sustain, and she had a fleeting feeling that she would have to survive them all.
They stood by his side for a long time. Occasionally they stroked his forehead. There was a slight pulse in his temple and it was cool. Bella held her fingers close, as if to encourage its beating. Auntie Sadie shook her head with the weariness of one who had seen it so often before.
The door opened, and when they looked around, it seemed that it had opened of its own accord, since no-one was standing on the threshold. It seemed to them all that the Angel of Death was calling it a day. They looked quickly at Rabbi Zweck, but he was still breathing gently. Then at the door again, and Billy, with his dressing-gown wound loosely about him, stepped timidly towards the bed. He looked at Rabbi Zweck, and then at the ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I liked him a lot. He called me William.’ Then he knelt at the foot of the bed, and prayed. He prayed silently for a long time. The women didn’t look at him. On the one hand, they were moved by his gesture, but on the other they felt a certain distaste that their father should be dispatched by a lunatic’s prayer. When he had finished, he looked again at the sleeping form. ‘Thank you,’ he said, and he left the room.
As soon as he had gone, Bella and the others recited the Shema again, loud and clear to sweep away any possible blasphemy that Billy had left at the foot of the bed. And so, amply fortified by both God and His Son, Rabbi Zweck died, and they took away their hands.
In the ward at the end of the corridor, Norman stirred violently in his sleep. He awoke with a start, but finding no-one at his side who could have awakened him, he took it for a bad dream, and he sighed back into his sleep.
Chapter 20
They let Norman’s deep sleep run its course. And when they woke him, they eased him for a few days back to his normal routine. And then they told him.
Norman came back to the ward from the nurse’s room. The feeling of remorse and repentance that was the aftermath of his sedation, in no way helped to cushion the shattering news of his father’s death. He had received it better had he been violent. But in his present state, anxious to atone, eager to be forgiven, there was now no point in either. It was too late for contrition. His time-honoured status as scapegoat was one that at last he himself would gladly assume, and there was a little peace in that. He buried his face in his hands. In the nurse’s room outside he had listened attentively while the doctor had had his say. He had asked no questions; he had simply stood there, collecting a series of words, and now he was alone and he had to assemble them.
But when this was done, and he could say to himself, ‘My father is dead,’ and a little later, ‘Poppa is dead,’ still something impeded his full-hearted weeping. He tried to understand why the tears would not flow. Perhaps it was the location of his father’s death that blocked them, the sense of degradation he must have felt, the utter humiliation that he could not keep it in until he’d reached his own bed. It was his fault, Norman admitted to himself, the site of his father’s passing, and even perhaps, the death itself. Desperately he recalled the moments of pleasure he had given his father during his life-time, to offset his terrible feeling of guilt. He was grateful for each single recollection, but his eyes remained dry, though his grief was choking him. He pictured his father lying in the ward, only a few yards away from where he now was sitting. He had slept through his dying, his death, his funeral and the mourning. He had slept through it all. And now he was experiencing each event in its turn. He had to experience them; it was his right as a son. He saw his father’s coffin lowered and he saw himself indifferently asleep. He saw Bella sitting on a low stool, and he heard the men’s nightly prayers, but he, the eldest son, was still sleeping. And still the tears did not come.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up and saw Billy, smiling his aimless smile. ‘I saw him,’ Billy said. ‘He died in peace. I prayed for him. I asked Jesus to take him to heaven.’
Norman shook his hand off his shoulder. He clenched his teeth and trembled with loathing. What right had this madman to see his father off? What right had he to pray for him. And to Jesus, for Christ’s sake, that word that for dose on seventy years had stuck in his father’s throat.
Billy stood there bewildered. ‘I went for you, Norman,’ he said timidly. ‘You were sleeping, so I went on your behalf.’
Norman touched his arm. He regretted his ingratitude. He wanted so desperately to pray. He felt that if he could pray, the tears would come. But how could he say Kaddish for his father, if his heart were not in the prayer. How long ago, Norman thought, had he truly believed, and when and at what precise moment, had he lost his faith. He thought back to his adolescence and he realised that it had come upon him slowly, sparked off by his father’s deep-rooted belief that the Jews were the chosen people. He had never been able to accept that, and he refused to accept it now, even though it meant that he could pray, and he cursed the Jewish God for having pa
ralysed his tongue.
A hot anger simmered inside him and he stood up by his bed. ‘Dear God,’ he shouted, then ‘Dearest God,’ overlaying his affection to offset his own fury. ‘Why did You choose us? Are we Your family, and did You choose us as Your scapegoat for all Your neuroses? Did You elect us to carry Your wrath, Your jealousy, Your expectation, Your omnipotence, Your mercy and pity, Your sheer bloody-mindedness?’ He sat on the bed trembling. He looked at Billy and realised the futility of his cursing. He and Billy were neighbours in a lunatic asylum, and no single word could divide them. They were both past God, past Jesus, past anybody’s pickings, for they were the chosen ones, and they answered only to themselves.
Yet why were they all there? Why were they the lite and no other? And he began to examine himself with the cold logic of his saner years. He thought of his family, because it was they, he had to admit, who had put him there, when the burden they had loaded on him had become too heavy to bear. ‘Bella can’t grow up,’ he said to himself, ‘and I carry it. Esther married out, and I carry it. My father, God rest his soul, failed, and I carry it. My mother wouldn’t let go, and finally broke my back. Together, they sucked the life out of me with ravenous appetite. Who am I, save their receptacle? Who am I save their ‘happening’? Who am I save my own sad packaging? He looked up at Billy pleadingly. ‘Teach me how to pray.’
Billy took his hand. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘we’ll kneel down together.’ But Norman shrank from that kind of idolatry. Kneeling was as blasphemous as the word Jesus, and he owed it to his father to deny those words as he had done. Confusion tore through him. All that was Jewish about him surged With a painful re-awakening. But Billy was by his side, and Billy had another god, and so did all those who surrounded him, the sad one in the corner, who had hugged the same corner for so long, the compulsive handwasher forever at the sink at his rites, and the man who hummed and never spoke. He saw them all, and in them all, he saw his own loneliness and despair. He felt tears behind his eyes, and in that moment, he understood that his father had left him, that he was alone, that he could cry only for himself, and those around him. And the tears flooded the blockage, and he wept like a child bereaved.
He let go of Billy’s hand. He had to pray on his own. He had to pray out of his own confusion, out of his own inherited permissible words. He would try. He put his hands together, and was pleased that the gesture, so long untried, had happened so naturally. He closed his eyes, and the old and ragged faith to enter him. ‘Shema,’ he began. He started in Hebrew to clarify which god he was addressing, but he was conscious of Billy at his side and he had to pray for him too. ‘Jesus,’ he whispered. He momentarily checked on his addressee. He was glad that what they called his madness, had managed to transcend the childish obscenity of that word.
‘Jesus,’ he said. and moreover, ‘sweet Jesus.’ His sobs were choking him, not only for his father, whose peace he almost envied, but for himself, and Billy, and all those around him, so loosely tacked onto life. He looked around the ward and smelled its desolation. For loneliness smells, like a house of mourning smells. He looked at Billy, then at the chess-player, the swallower, the handwasher and the hummer, and the tight-lipped sad in the corner. He remembered Minister too, and he gathered them all into his prayer. ‘You,’ he screamed to the ceiling, ‘and you bloody well know who I mean.’ He sank weeping onto his bed.
‘Dear God,’ he said. It was a word after all, that covered everybody. ‘Look after us cold and chosen ones.’
About the Author
Bernice Rubens was born in Cardiff, Wales in July 1928. She read English at the University of Wales and married young; she worked as an English teacher and a filmmaker before she began writing at the age of 35, when her children started nursery school. Reubens’s first novel, Set on Edge (1960), was threaded with the themes of Orthodox Judaism and family life. The book was a success, which encouraged her to continue with writing: her second novel, Madame Sousatzka (1962), was filmed by John Schlesinger, with Shirley MacLaine in the leading role, in 1988, and her fourth novel, The Elected Member, won the 1970 Booker prize. She was shortlisted for the same prize again in 1978 for A Five Year Sentence.
Reubens was an honorary vice-president of International PEN and served as a Booker judge in 1986; her last novel, The Sergeants’ Tale, was published in 2003, a year before her death at age 76.
The Elected Member Page 23