Kalooki Nights

by Howard Jacobson

  But I was running ahead of my own thoughts. Dorothy shot and killed, or Dorothy shot and wounded, or Dorothy shot and missed, was substanceless imagining. Enough – terrible enough – just to imagine Manny wanting Dorothy to be shot. The Eleventh Commandment: you don’t go round killing people in your head. Least of all when the worst thing they’ve done to you is to fall in love with your brother. You should love those, should you not, who love those to whom you are devoted? You should be bound by the concurrence of your affections. As Shani believed Tsedraiter Ike should have been bound to Mick.

  Then again, let Dorothy’s virtues plead angel-tongued against her taking off, she had wreaked havoc on the Washinskys. Twice, and twice is more than twice as bad as once. Selick Washinsky might make a better job of dying this time round. Asher too might not survive it all again. True, Manny had looked with a brother’s love into Asher’s heart and imagined it as an empty bed which now, miraculously, was warm. But what if this rerun of old happiness merely presaged a rerun of old sorrows? She had made a ghost of Asher before; who was to say she would not make a ghost of him again.

  It should have been over. Tragically over, but over. Manny had been on her side the first time. But her second coming changed the distribution of right and wrong.

  And then there was himself to consider. Were his feelings of no account? Dorothy had stepped in between him and his brother – unceremoniously elbowing him aside – palpitating with the greed of life, just as Manny was thinking that his own life, at last, was brimming over with happiness.

  Kill or be killed.

  I’d have tackled him with this the next day had he allowed me. But he must have known something along these lines was in the offing. He spent the day in bed, whatever he knew. Only coming out to make himself a honey and banana sandwich when he thought I wasn’t around.

  He spent the next day in bed as well. And the next.

  This might have been pure fancy but it was as though he had turned himself in for a crime for which he had until now escaped punishment, appointing me to be his warder.

  It felt quiet and oddly comforting in the house. I half wanted to go round at night, checking the cells, whistling, and jingling my keys.

  FIFTEEN

  I dunno...Maybe EVERYONE has to feel guilty.

  EVERYONE! FOREVER!

  Art Spiegelman, Maus

  1

  On the evening of the third day, Francine rang. How was our yeshiva boy, she wanted to know. I tried my new theory out on her – not that of my house having become a prison, but Manny pointing a gun at Dorothy.

  She was excited by the gun element. ‘A gun’s good,’ she said. ‘We like guns.’

  ‘Except,’ I said, going off my own theory the minute I voiced it, ‘I think it’s all baloney.’

  ‘Why do you think it’s all baloney?’

  ‘Well, for a start because there’s no reason to believe he shot anybody, except in his own head.’

  Shooting people in his own head she was less excited by. ‘Not quite so televisual,’ she told me. ‘And besides, I rather liked where we were going last time. Manny sweet on the girl.’

  ‘Manny? Sweet? Manny doesn’t do sweet.’

  ‘Every man does sweet, Max. Even weird ones with

  payess.’ Payess. Hebrew for sidelocks. How did she know payess?

  (Ways of Saying Payess When You’re Not Jewish, Vol. III.)

  ‘Run it by me, Francine,’ I said.

  ‘Manny sweet on girl, Manny jealous of his brother, Manny thinking of killing his brother, Manny then sparing his brother out of love for the girl, and killing his parents instead . . .’

  ’Because he blamed them for putting him in payess and making him unlovable?’

  ‘Well, that as well, certainly, but more I think because he wanted to make a statement about Jewish attitudes to Gentiles. He killed his parents because he could not forgive the things they had said about the girl. He was killing his religion. We can run on that. It’s only a shame – from the point of view of narrative I mean – that he didn’t then turn the gun on himself. That would have been perfect.’

  ‘Not gun, gas taps.’

  ‘Yes, gas taps, more perfect still.’

  But if we were going in that direction, I had another thought. Asher, in despair of ever getting his parents to accept Dorothy, realising that they will never leave him alone so long as he is with her, and discovering, what is more, that they have tried to get him certified as a lunatic, turns the gas taps on them. Manny, out of love for the girl, takes the rap. ‘I accept that you love him and will never love me, so be it, and rather than see you suffer another moment’s unhappiness I will rot away my life in prison, adieu, my lovely, my golden faigeleh, be happy with my brother, this is a far far better thing, blah blah.’ Several years later, when Manny learns that Asher has turned into a love rat, cheating on Dorothy with any woman he can lay his hands on, he thinks of having him rubbed out. No – better still – Dorothy, who warned Asher she would kill him if he ever left her again, goes to Manny and asks him to arrange to have Asher rubbed out. Manny says he’ll see what he can do. The gun wasn’t literally in Manny’s hands. He put a contract out. Not hard to do when you’re inside. Whisper, whisper, bar of chocolate, maybe a blow job, and it’s as good as done. Only at the last minute he relented. He couldn’t make Dorothy husbandless – nor could he make her a murderer in the eyes of God – no matter what sort of mamzer the husband had turned out to be.

  A longer silence than usual from Francine. Then, ‘Are you taking the piss, Max?’

  Who are you, Maxie Glickman? What’s your game?

  ‘I don’t see,’ I said, ‘that my narrative is any more far-fetched than yours. Except maybe for the blow job.’

  ‘OK, so do we know that Asher was a love rat?’

  ‘We don’t know anything. Manny glides away from any discussion of Asher and Dorothy as they are now, if they are now, or even as they were when he was put away. I think they stopped for him when his parents stopped. It’s them we should ask.’

  ‘Easier said than done. First find them.’

  ‘Isn’t that Christopher Christmas’s job?’

  ‘I’ll speak to him. But in the meantime, Max, can we get the Jewish angle back?’

  ‘This isn’t about religion, Francine. I’m coming round to your way of thinking – it’s about love. I’m even wondering if we shouldn’t make them all Gentiles so as not to get sidetracked.’

  ‘Trust me, Max,’ she said, ‘it’s about religion.’

  2

  There’s a simple rule about temper: if you can’t lose it with one person you lose it with another.

  In the brief but bruising time I was married to Alÿs – I accept it was brief and bruising for her too – I behaved abominably to my mother. ‘If this is what you’re like married to a nice Jewish girl,’ she said towards the end of one of my more vitriolic Crumpsall visits, in the course of which I’d attacked everything she did and everyone she knew, ‘I can’t wait for you to be divorced and going out with a shikseh again.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ I said. ‘And Alÿs isn’t a nice Jewish girl. There are no nice Jewish girls. The first Jewish girl I ever touched gave me crabs—’

  ‘Max!’

  ‘Well, it’s the truth. And this one wants me to become a Palestinian. They’re either lewd or they’re self-righteous. Or they live in the mikveh. Or they play kalooki.’

  ‘Well, that’s a variety for you to choose from.’

  ‘But none of them are nice. I’ve never met a nice Jewish girl.’

  ‘What about your sister? Isn’t Shani a nice Jewish girl?’

  ‘Yes but she’s my sister, and she plays kalooki.’

  ‘Will you shut up about kalooki!’

  ‘I can’t. Why if you must play cards don’t you at least play bridge? Or poker even. Why don’t you go to the theatre? This house used to be full of intellectuals. They talked Marx in the garden, Ma. Where are they now?’

  ‘Dead,
Max.’

  ‘So find some more.’

  ‘There are no more. They don’t make Jews like that any more. And anyway, they came for your father, not me.’

  ‘That isn’t true. They came every bit as much for you. I remember how their faces lit up when they saw you.’

  ‘You can hardly call that intellectual.’

  ‘Yes, you can. Since they weren’t, I assume, all having affairs with you, they were in love with the idea of you. And you have to be an intellectual to be in love with the idea of beauty.’

  ‘Thank you, Max. But I was young then. I’m sorry that I haven’t been able to stay young for you for ever.’

  ‘Ma, it’s not just about being young. You used to dance in the living room with trade unionists. And when you weren’t dancing you were arguing. Now you watch soap operas on television and go to see Phantom of the Opera with your girlfriends.’

  ‘Twice!’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘What’s wrong with Phantom of the Opera?’

  ‘Everything. But the main thing wrong with it is that it’s not Jewish. It’s goyisher. You should have some pride.’

  ‘So what are we supposed to do? Watch Fiddler on the Roof every night?’

  ‘I don’t mean that.’

  ‘You marry shiksehs and I watch Fiddler on the Roof to make it right! Here’s an idea – why don’t you stop marrying shiksehs and let me enjoy Phantom of the Opera?’

  ‘Because I lose my temper when I’m not married to a shikseh.’

  ‘You’re not exactly happy when you’re with them, Max.’

  ‘I know. But at least my unhappiness isn’t Jew-centred. I can be unhappy and not think it’s the fault of our religion. I don’t have to be disappointed by another Jew. What’s happened to us, Ma? Why are all the Jews up here either make-believe goyim or Hassidim in fancy dress? In hiding, or not in hiding enough. Where did our Jewish seriousness go?’

  ‘The Hassidim you are so rude about are serious. How can you say they aren’t? They wouldn’t think you were much of a serious Jew.’

  ‘Because I’m a cartoonist?’

  ‘Because you’re not a serious Jew. What do you do that is Jewish?’

  ‘What do I do that is Jewish? That’s a laugh. What do I do that isn’t Jewish? And everything I do is more Jewish than anything they do. They’re a sect. They’re two centuries old, tiptop. And they’re as flaky as Mormons. I’m the real thing, Ma. I go back to the Old Testament. I’m what a Jew is supposed to be. I don’t forgive. I separate things. I argue with the Almighty. He likes that. He likes what I do more than he likes their blind obedience or all that ecstatic dancing they go in for. Every time anyone danced in the seeing of the Lord in the good old days He sent down thunderbolts to burn them up. He’d have Hassids for breakfast if He were still around. They’re not serious. They’re hysterics. Serious was what happened in our garden.’

  ‘Don’t upset me.’

  But I needed to upset her.

  ‘I want my dad back, Ma.’

  ‘So do I, Max.’

  And in the same way, for the very reason that I couldn’t tell Francine what I thought of her – not least because I didn’t know what I thought of her – I took it out on Manny.

  ‘Look, I enjoy having you here,’ I told him, when he finally surfaced for breakfast. He hadn’t bothered to change out of his neurovegetative pyjamas. His curiously unlined face was crumpled from sleep. He looked like a boy who had gone to bed forty years ago, and woken up an old man.

  But not old enough to respond gracefully. No Thank you very much, I am enjoying being here myself. No shy smile of gratitude if words were beyond him. But then what the hell! – he never did have manners.

  ‘You can stay for ever if you like,’ I went on. ‘To my surprise I find your company soothing. But come on, Manny. You know perfectly well what the gesheft is here. You agreed to it. Yes, you said, yes you’d talk to me. And all I get, when I get anything, when you haven’t gone into hiding for a week, is Horst Schumann, Oscar fucking Wilde, guns, swords, you shooting Dorothy—’

  ‘Who said anything about shooting Dorothy?’

  ‘You asked me to guess who you might have fancied pointing your little gun at. So that’s my guess. Dorothy. Or that was my guess. Today I don’t think you fancied pointing a gun at anybody.’

  ‘Why would I have wanted to s-ssschoot Dorothy?’

  He was growing agitated, banging the tips of his fingers together.

  ‘I’ve just told you, that isn’t any longer what I think. You were winding me up. I let myself be wound. OK?’

  ‘But you let yourself think I wanted to kill Dorothy?’

  ‘Manny, for God’s sake – I did, I do, I will, think anything. I am not proof against thoughts. Particularly when another person’s prompting them as you were. Don’t make anything of this.’

  I passed him the toast. Peace.

  He took two slices and cut them into narrow segments, like the soldiers children dip into their eggs. Then he stared down at what he’d done. Two hands, of five fingers each.

  ‘Why, of all people, did you choose Dorothy? I was Dorothy’s friend. If you want to know, I liked her more than Asher.’

  Did he mean he liked her more than Asher liked her, or he liked her more than he liked Asher? You don’t ask. You don’t quibble over syntax when someone’s making human hands out of toast. But it did matter, what he meant. It made a difference.

  ‘That’s interesting,’ I said. Thinking as I said it that poor old Francine had employed the wrong person for this job. She was right – I did come at everything backwards.

  ‘I’m flattered by your interest. But I want you to explain your thinking to me. You explain what you think Dorothy had ever done to me that I should want to harm her.’

  Fucked your life, was the answer I wanted to give. But what I chose to say was, ‘Caused everyone great pain. Caused you misery.’

  ‘How had she caused me misery?’

  ‘It caused you immense misery to see everyone so distressed the first time. You told me that. You told me you were having fits. I can easily understand that when she appeared from nowhere, starting the whole thing over, just as you and Asher were getting on well . . . Christ, Manny, you said yourself you felt as though your life had just begun . . . I can easily understand why that would have upset you.’

  ‘Upset me?’ More out of distress than anger, it seemed to me, he pushed his toast away from him. A couple of pieces fell to the floor. My job to retrieve them, I thought. And maybe my job to stay down there, scrabbling about under the table, while he calmed himself.

  ‘S-sscch-sssch-shit!’ he said, rising from his chair. It was the first time he had ever got the word out. The first time I had ever heard him swear.

  A great desolation swept over me. Now that he had sworn, the world was a sadder, meaner place. We’d been happy so long as Manny kept the s-shit inside him. We hadn’t known it, but we were.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  He went over to the sink and turned the tap on, holding his hands under the water. Not washing, just letting them get wet. ‘Sorry. That’s all right then, is it? You’re sorry.’

  ‘No, it isn’t all right if you don’t feel it is. But I’m still sorry.’

  He was, I thought, resolutely showing me his back, not just hiding himself from me but denying me his face, excluding me from human commerce. Was that what prisoners did? I wondered. Was that how, in a confined space, you withdrew the consolation of humanity?

  From behind he resembled a crippled child, twisted and shrunken, the head, on its optimistic questionmark neck, still a little boy’s; but inside the dressing gown his bones were disintegrating. Shake the dressing gown and he’d fall out of it in bits.

  I could tell from the movement of his neck that he was saying something, emptying words into the sink.

  ‘I can’t hear you,’ I said. ‘If you want to speak to me, you’ll have to turn the water off.’

  He swung round
and bared his little teeth at me. Had he been holding a gun . . .

  ‘You don’t kill people,’ he said, ‘because they “upset” you.’

  It was now or never. ‘So why do you kill people?’ I said at long, long last.

  3

  I knew the official version by heart. On his belated arrest in 1961, the Austrian-born euthanasiast and flautist Georg Renno, deputy director of the SS gassing institution at Hartheim, declared that ‘Turning the tap on was no big deal’. According to Manny’s lawyers, it was in order to verify this claim that Manny had turned the tap on while his parents were asleep. Renno was wrong, he said in his statement. Turning the tap on was a big deal.

  I wondered if, over breakfast – over what was left of breakfast – Manny was going to tell me what he’d told his lawyers.

  But it was hard to get him off the subject of Dorothy. I cannot reproduce the fits and starts of what he said. Now returning to the table to discuss it all equably, as though he hadn’t thrown his toast on the floor, hadn’t turned his back on me, hadn’t bared his teeth, for all the world as though we were discussing nothing more important to him than an item in the morning’s newspapers; then rising from his chair again in what I feared could be the beginning of a fit, going over to the sink, turning on the water as though he needed not to hear himself, shouting into the water and rinsing away his words. But the gist of it was that he saw Dorothy as an opportunity not just for Asher, but for his family, for his father and his mother, and for himself. She was their second chance. In Dorothy something else had happened that wasn’t the same old story. She was a release for them. Nothing to do with forgiveness. Nothing to do with making peace with Germans. It wasn’t even about her, it was about them. Whatever the rights and wrongs of refusing her the first time, they should, for their own sakes, have accepted her a second. He could see the argument going on for ever. Again and again, round and around, for another two thousand years and another two thousand years after that. Dorothy gave them a way of breaking the chain. Accept Dorothy and it was as good, after all that darkness, as accepting light. He made her sound like a new religion.