‘Uh?’
‘Ben, is he going in?’
She groans and mumbles something about the time.
‘Wednesday. We have to treat it like a normal Wednesday. I have calls to make. Ben is going to school, isn’t he?’
Rachel sits up and Jay’s blood fizzes because the nipple of her left breast is pushed out above the twisted neckline of her top. The sight of it stirs him and the MC asks whether after twenty-whatever years such a reaction is sweet or pitiable.
Don’t make a grab for her.
Jay leans across to nuzzle into her neck and his right hand touches her breast; his thumb flicks across the nipple. She brushes his hand away. ‘I have to pee. I have to get a pot of tea on the go for Ben, make sure he has a good breakfast and see him off. We both have a lot on our minds. Do tell me you’re not thinking …’
Jay places his offending hand flat on the duvet. ‘I was … I was just being affectionate.’
She leans into him. ‘You can be affectionate later.’
His thoughts turn to the realisation that the MC has crept into his life again and he considers the implications. Does it mean he’s mad? He shakes his head. The MC is a defence mechanism dreamed up to help him deal with the unthinkable. As long as he keeps him in his place, he can’t see any harm.
Breakfast is a cheerless procedure. They’re following the script like actors in a first read-through.
Jay on the musical: ‘Have rehearsals started yet?’
Ben, toast halfway to his lips: ‘They were meant to start today. I’m not sure it will happen now.’
Rachel, sipping her tea: ‘They’ll want to keep things normal.’
Ben: Yeah, but what if one of the cast has lost somebody?
Jay: Have they?
Ben: Don’t know. Who knows what’s happened to anybody?
Rachel: They’d be missing, I suppose.
Ben: Well, the kid wouldn’t come in until they knew.
Jay: Shall I turn on the TV – find out the latest?
Both: No!
Rachel: We had enough yesterday.
Ben: I’d better go.
Jay: I hope rehearsals start. It’ll give you something to think about.
His wife and son glance at him.
‘What?’ He considers what he said.
It’s not Ben who needs something to fill his mind.
‘You know what I mean,’ Jay says.
All three of them cock their heads as if responding to a noise off-stage; it’s the blare of the school-bus engine.
‘Gottarush!’ Ben says.
‘Have a nice day.’ Jay steps forward and hugs his son. There’s tension in the embrace. He pulls away.
‘You too, Dad.’
Jay and Rachel follow Ben out and arrive at the corner as the bus draws up. Ben is acting as if his whole life has been spent in line waiting for the school bus.
Rachel nods to the children from next door. ‘Good morning, Tyler, Peach.’
They nod back. Their faces are pale with deep, dark eye-sockets.
Jay shakes his head. How does she remember their names?
The bus doors fold back and the kids clamber up into a leaden atmosphere. The doors whisper shut. The bus moves away past Jay and Rachel’s house on the left. Three-hundred-or-so metres further on at the far end of the lane, where it turns right, another group of kids stands by the entrance to the town park.
‘Look! Josh and Leah Edler are there.’ Rachel stands on tip-toe, her back arched, and she waves. Jay takes her hand. They watch the bus slow and stop. Its rear lights blaze and a red disc swings out to warn cars not to overtake. Jay wonders at how different life is in America.
When they go back to the house a silence fills the large space in the small kitchen vacated by their son. Avoiding eye contact, they tidy the used crockery and utensils into the dishwasher. Jay looks at his watch. Coming up to eight o’clock. Nearly 24 hours on. No point calling anybody until at least 08.30. His case is nothing like an emergency.
‘I’m going down to the den,’ he says.
Ben has left the computer switched on. Jay, prompted by what he remembers as his own decision to support Ben, uses the webpage Yahoo! to locate a site that provides information on the movie Cabaret. The page has scenes from the film embedded in it including the one where the boy sings Tomorrow Belongs to Me. Jay has time to make a cup of tea while his machine loads with the necessary software. Finally, the computer unfreezes and the extract is ready to play.
The quality of the boy’s voice is the first thing to make an impression; it is youthful, just-broken. Jay hasn’t thought about it before but the young actor doesn’t seem to be singing in a recognisable register. Perhaps this is what Ben meant when he said that he had been told that he was a natural counter-tenor. Jay’s mood shifts as the song morphs from something bucolic and wistful. It creeps up on him but it starts when the volk around the singer join in and the song swells into a menacing anthem. By the end, when the singer gives the Nazi salute, the garden is bursting with nationalistic fervour. Michael York turns to his aristocratic companion – a German: ‘So you still think you can control them?’
One person in the scene stays unmoved. An old gentleman in a blue, peaked cap, nursing his beer in his left hand. He’s seen it before. He shifts his cap to one side and scratches his head at their folly.
Jay’s also shaking his head. There are Americans who will be looking for a nationalistic response. Their country is at its lowest since Pearl Harbor. Who can they turn to if it’s to be raised up again? Can their President, who distinguished himself on the day by his absence, step up to the plate, as they say? Is he capable of taking war to the Muslim extremists? Or is it the terrorists themselves who offer the parallel with that scene?
While Jay waits for the film’s opening to load, he tries to determine a profound way of linking what he’s watched to the horrors of the day before, but he’s unable to grasp it. When the computer’s ready, Jay clicks on ‘play’ and immediately recognises the bm-ta-ta, bm-ta-ta, bm-ta-ta-ta-bm-ta introduction. It’s the rhythm of the train wheels as they crossed the points when the presence moved in alongside him. Joel Grey’s face appears in close-up to sing the first word Willkommen and consolidates it – these thoughts and images that spring from nowhere, they are not Jay’s. They come from him – the MC.
He hears Rachel’s feet on the rush-matted stairs and clicks ‘pause’. She’s carrying a plastic basket of washing. She shrugs. ‘Life must go on.’
He watches her disappear behind the open door to the laundry area and hears the lid of the top-loader swing back.
‘What were you listening to?’ she calls.
‘Ben’s song from Cabaret – the film version.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I’d forgotten how scary it was.’
‘Mmm.’
‘Has he told you about how it works in the musical?’ He hears the washer rumble into life.
Rachel emerges wiping her hands on a towel. ‘Only that he has to sing it twice. First time he’s off stage. The MC guy, you know, the Joel Grey part in the film …’ Jay experiences a jolt of guilt as she names his white-faced, carmine-lipped secret ‘… he plays it on a gramophone. Only a few minutes later, Ben has to do it properly on stage. There’s a party and one of the guests asks him to sing it to embarrass some Jews who are there.’
Great-Uncle Hymie’s clothes hanger! ‘People like us,’ he says.
Rachel turns the corners of her mouth down. ‘If you put it like that …’
‘Have you wondered about it, Rachel, our Jewishness?’
‘What makes you ask? Is it yesterday?’
‘It’s this country. Everybody has a religion. It was the first question that guy Edler asked me at their party. “Which synagogue do you go to?” What would you say to that? ’ He recalls the evening they had prepared for the Edler ‘soiree’.
‘It feels like we’re “coming out”.’ Rachel was standing with her black dress gaping
at the back.
‘We will be a bit “on show”.’ Jay was halfway through a decision whether or not to wear a tie but automatically he reached forward to pull the dress’s zipper to the top. Rachel made to step away but he put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Just a second, love. There’s a claspy thing.’ As he fiddled the hook into the loop of cotton he studied the nape of his wife’s neck.
He had loved her thick hair from the first time he saw her and even now, after nearly thirty years, he was excited by the way she flicked it behind her tiny ear, stabbed through with a black pearl stud. Finally the hook was in. He nuzzled his lips into her collar bone. It always made her shiver and scrunch up her shoulders. ‘Okay. You’re done.’ He patted her bottom to help her on her way to the dressing table. He hoped they would return to the house neither too drunk nor too tired. He groaned. It was work next day. ‘Any idea why we’re doing this on a Thursday? Why not the weekend?’
Rachel was putting a lipstick to her mouth and sounded like a ventriloquist with a swollen-tongue but Jay still understood: ‘No idea.’
When they had arrived at the Edler house Beth Edler and Melissa Rosenberg snatched Rachel’s comfortable presence away. Ben rushed up the stairs to join Josh Edler who had beckoned him from an open doorway and Jay was suddenly alone – facing the backs of people as they pecked at each other’s party blah. He felt like a mariner set adrift in a rowboat.
‘Jay, you seem to be far away, there. What, no drink? What’s your poison? Follow me, I’ll show you what we have.’ Howard Edler led the way to the kitchen and a worktop with enough booze to tank a party in a bordello. He waved at the selection of drinks like a conjurer’s assistant demonstrating something that would shortly disappear.
‘White wine?’ Jay said.
‘No problem. But it’s not as cold as it should be.’ At the same time as he pointed this out, and before Jay could protest, he poured a slug of wine into the glass and followed it with a sloppy handful of melting ice cubes. He wiped his hand on a paper towel and handed over the slush.
Jay offered it up like a priest’s chalice. ‘Cheers!’
Raising his beer glass, Howard responded, ‘L’chaim!’
Jay took a sip and grimaced. After some seconds, in which time he looked into his wine glass, he said, ‘How long have you lived in Burford Lakes?’ Then, realising that he was talking to the party host, ‘It’s Howard, right?’
‘That’s right, Jay. Howard Edler. Oh, Beth and I have been here … what? A couple of years before Josh was born … fifteen years?’
Jay tried another swallow of wine-flavoured water and it sloshed across his tongue without troubling his taste buds. ‘Fifteen! Have you seen a lot of changes in that time?’ He looked up into Howard’s face. The man loomed over him. He had an enormous head. His features filled it, so they too were magnified. His greying moustache hung from his upper lip like Spanish moss. His hooter – it’s the only word for a nose such as his – was a bulbous Tube map of broken veins.
Howard rocked his head from side to side as he weighed up his response. ‘Let’s see: the Kisco Skies apartment building, the mall and the High School they’re all newish but they’re more Burford Station. This old part, Burford Lakes, hasn’t changed; couple of new smarter eating places. Oh! And the little movie house, which had been derelict, that re-opened.’
‘Sort of gentrification of the old part, then.’
‘Hmmm.’ Silence.
Jay looked down into his glass hoping the next topic would float by on the slivers of ice. He wanted to flee to the main room but Howard’s bulk was between him and the door. It was a relief when Howard reached forward and took him by the elbow. ‘I’d wanted to ask you,’ he lowered his voice and steered Jay towards the door to the backyard, ‘which temple are you going to join?’
‘Temple?’ Jay remembered the research he had done before coming to America. He had read that men in the suburbs had their strange lodges of Mooses and Buffalos and other animals it was their habit to kill. Did one of these meet in a temple? Was Howard trying to recruit him into a Freemason-like sect before anybody else could tie him in?
‘Temple. Synagogue. Have you and Rachel decided where you’re going to worship?’
Synagogue? What was he saying? ‘No. I mean: not, no, we haven’t decided; more no, we haven’t thought about it.’
Howard nodded. He was frowning. ‘It’s too early, right?’
Jay shook his head. ‘No!’ His voice sounded squeakier than he’d hoped. ‘No. It’s … we’re … we’re not … religious.’ He felt like a child-molester who had just confessed. In his mind, the room next door had become shocked into silence but the continuing hubbub reassured him this wasn’t so. He leant into Howard. ‘We’re not Jewish – I mean we’re not practising.’
It was Howard’s turn to be puzzled. He placed his paw on Jay’s arm. ‘I’m so sorry, Jay. I misspoke. I shouldn’t have assumed. It’s just … your name’s Halprin, right? I looked it up; it’s Ashkenazi in origin – possibly rabbinical. You’re Jacob and Rachel. You can see where I made the mistake, right?’
Jay relaxed. He was on the front foot. ‘No problem.’ He gripped Howard’s upper arm. ‘We are Jew-ish. It’s just we’re not practising. We don’t do religion.’
Howard stroked his moustache down as if he could pull it over his top lip and this would take back what he had said. ‘It was when Josh told me your son’s name – Ben Halprin – another good Jewish name. You can understand how I could have got it wrong.’
‘It’s an easy mistake, Howard.’
They chuckled like conspirators.
‘Anyway, Jay, I’m with the Reform Temple myself. That’s the easy-going branch. So if you ever feel in need – well, you know where to come.’
‘It’s very kind of you, Howard, thank you.’ He slugged back the tasteless dregs in his glass. ‘Now, if it’s okay, I’d like to try some more of your excellent wine.’
After the party, Rachel and Jay strolled back along Ponds Lane. Ben trailed behind. Jay had drunk more than he’d meant to and already the next morning’s headache was germinating behind his eyes. He groaned and a thought bubbled up from the magma flowing thickly in his head. ‘I know why it was a Thursday night “do”.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s because they’re Jews – Jewish – whatever you’re meant to say. The Edlers. Tomorrow’s Friday. The Sabbath – is that the right word? It starts Friday night, doesn’t it? And Saturday’s the holy day so you can’t have it then. So, ipso facto, it has to be Thursday.’
‘Is it all day Saturday? Can’t they have a party on a Saturday night?’
They turned up the path to the front door. ‘Don’t think so. It’s all day isn’t it? Anyway, Howard – old man Edler – thought we were Jewish too. Asked me which Temple we’re going to.’
Rachel opened the screen-door and fiddled the key into the lock. ‘We are Jewish aren’t we?’
He suddenly had the urgent need to pee. ‘Well, yes, but, like I told him, we don’t do religion. We’re not practising.’
Rachel giggled. ‘No we’re very good at it.’ She followed this with a loud extended belch. The front door opened and they tumbled inside.
‘Jay! ’ Rachel interrupts his reverie. He’s forgotten the conversation. He drags himself back to the present and recalls that he had asked her about their Jewishness.
‘I’m happy as I am. I don’t see the need for it.’ She sits next to him. They’re on the sofa that, folded-out, had been their bed at the time of the party. She reaches up and strokes his head. ‘I can understand if you need something – religion whatever – after yesterday.’
Jay laughs. ‘I’m not going to let myself turn into a basket case.’
Are you sure about that?
Chapter 8
Leo Plomer became my Berlin fixer. Within 48 hours I had moved into Frau Guttchen’s upper property at Uhlandstrasse 187 – a building I had dubbed ‘das gruene Haus’ – ‘The Green House’. As Leo suspected, my roo
m – evidently once the living room of the apartment – was large enough for a double bed, a sitting area with a sofa and an easy-chair, and a work space in front of the window which overlooked Steinplatz.
The windows were strange affairs – stretched vertically and arched, framed in dun ceramic tiles. The space within was busy with green-painted wood frames set with glass and strange harem-style outward-hinged wooden blinds that had no glass behind them. Leo mentioned that I should notice that the architecture was clearly influenced by Rennie-Mackintosh. Frankly, at that time I neither knew nor cared what he was talking about. I had very adequate accommodation and it was a lot cheaper than the hotel.
Frau Guttchen even provided a breakfast of sorts with a slice of bread smeared with what she called butter. This was served with cheese and a slice of ham or sausage. It was a fixed meal for a negligible price and sitting down to breakfast was a good way of socialising with the other tenants and practising my German. There were four of them with, sadly, not a Sally Bowles character among them. They were all male because Frau Guttchen didn’t take women. According to Leo this was because the sort of single woman who needed this sort of room would be earning her living on her back. So the other four tenants were men. All respectable looking with administration jobs in one or other of the educational institutions strung out along Hardenbergstrasse.
After breakfast, I worked through the day, except for my stroll down to the square for coffee. From my desk, in moments of inactivity over the next month or so, I was able to watch the trees in Steinplatz bloom and then burgeon with leaf. In the evenings Leo and I would stroll along the railway arches, dodging the beggars, and take in a low-cost meal with beer or cheap wine at one of many cafes that catered for the less well-heeled Berliners.
It took Leo a surprisingly long time to mention girls until one night, over a plate of ham, cabbage and potato, he said, “Do you have a girlfriend in Blighty, Cam?” The building shook as a train thundered overhead. The candles gutted in unison, creating a theatrical effect of the building being tossed at sea.
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