Kalooki Nights

by Howard Jacobson

  I couldn’t see his face. But from the tilt of his head I wondered if he was yammering. You can always tell, even from behind, when a person is grieving. There is some ravage in the posture. And something in the air about them that tells you that your being there, observing or not observing, is a profanity.

  I didn’t call his name. Nor did I follow him. He had got here on his own. He could get back. I was not his keeper.

  I stayed out late, sitting in cafés, sketching. Nothing malicious. Where I didn’t see anything I liked, I didn’t draw it. When I returned I found a little package waiting for me in a British Museum plastic bag. It contained a tie. A silk British Museum tie illustrated with a scene from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. An elegant little card, explanatory of the scene, came with the tie. Ani and his wife Tutu watch as Ani’s heart is weighed in the balance against an ostrich feather representative of Maat, goddess of truth and justice. Anubis, the canine god of the dead, affirms the accuracy of the scales. Ammut, the obscene waste-disposer of the netherworld, part crocodile, part lion, part hippopotamus, stands ready to devour any heart made heavy by sin.

  There was no message with the package. But then what was there to say?

  When I looked into Manny’s room this time I was certain his cardboard case would be gone. And it was.

  Before going to bed I put the tie around my neck. It fell nicely, Ammut the heart-gobbler pushing his snout into my chest. So, had I sinned? Egregiously, if promiscuous suspicion is to be called a sin. For the first time I understood what was meant by a statute of limitation. You pay your debt and that’s enough. But I had weighed down Manny with more crimes than hell had room for, imagining him capable of everything except competence, so that in the end I didn’t know whether to take him seriously or lightly, as a monster or a buffoon, or ultimately as both. And, much as with his father when we played street cricket, trying to hit an ‘eight’ through the window of the dark little room where he sewed himself blind, for no other reason than that he was a Jew of the wrong sort. Suspecting Manny of wishing harm to Dorothy – merely wishing it, no more than that, merely thinking about it – wasn’t the last straw. The last straw was not allowing him, the author of his doom, his own version of events. ‘But turning on the tap, Manny . . .’ What right did I have to insist on the appropriate language to describe a murder, or to demand a proper acknowledgement of guilt, I who sought to contain the world in the panel box of a cartoon and burst into tears the minute a woman in high heels came running at me with a knife?

  But even that did not mark the extent to which my wastedisposal jaws had opened. Did he know that I had decided nothing was beyond him? That I piled abomination upon abomination on him until, in my mind, not even a child was safe in his company?

  Did he know I’d been watching him at the British Museum? Did the tie imply a commentary on that offence as well? It was possible. But even if Manny hadn’t caught me spying on him, Ammut had.

  And now, part crocodile, part lion, part hippopotamus, he was waiting to devour me.

  5

  I didn’t answer my phone for the next three weeks. I cancelled all social engagements. In another time and in another place I would have wandered into the wilderness. For my heart was withered like the grass.

  You can, all on your ownio, even without the help of a Chloë or a Zoë, come to dislike your own mind. ‘Whoso privily slandereth his neighbour, him I will cut off.’ Sometimes, when you’ve steeped your neighbour in slander as high as the offended heavens, you need to cut yourself off.

  I took long walks, kicking stones and shaking my head where no one could see me. Had I encountered anyone I knew I would have hidden or pretended to be someone else. Max Glickman? You’ve got the wrong person. Never heard of Max Glickman.

  Every three or four days I played back my telephone messages, just in case. A number were from Francine Bryson-Smith, growing bothered that she couldn’t raise me. I detected a note of false concern, as though she expected me to believe that she feared Manny might have gassed me. ‘Everything all right, there? If you’re in, will you pick up? Mmmm. OK.’

  It interested me to note that her beauty was no longer audible to me. Was that because she wasn’t speaking live? Did her beauty need an interlocutor in the same way as all beauty is said to need a beholder? I liked the idea that the beauty I normally heard when she spoke directly to me on the phone was an effect we cooked up together, a conspiracy of two. Did that mean I could make her vanish altogether in the end, just by never picking up? I’m not saying I wanted her to be gone. But it was her fault that I had ashes in my mouth, and that I did not want to see my own face in the mirror; had she not come to me out of the blue to put some flesh on her little project, I could have left Manny where I’d safely stowed him all those years before, not to be thought about, expunged, not to be Jewed up all over again in my unpleasant mind. So let her stew. She could wait till I was good and ready.

  Ready, anyway.

  Then, sandwiched between her messages, came one from Errol Tobias. He, on the other hand, lost nothing of his characteristic loathsomeness when he left a message. You’d have thought it would be the other way round. If the devil has no shadow or reflection, you’d expect him not to be there on an answering machine either. But he came over undiminished. So maybe it was Francine Bryson-Smith who was the devil. Which, as it happens, was exactly what Errol was ringing me to say.

  Errol’s message began with a couple of new entries to his Who Is Jewishly Who. Did I know that the porn star Traci Lords was actually born Nora Louise Kuzman, and the porn performance artist Annie Sprinkle was Ellen Sternberg? Neither piece of information moved me much. Annie Sprinkle I knew of, and since she looked and behaved Jewish it was no surprise she was Jewish. Nor did the false name Sprinkle constitute a Gentilisation proper. It was a joke obscenity, even sounded vaguely like a Jewish joke obscenity, and so didn’t count as apostasy. Traci Lords, I was prepared to grant, was different, but as I didn’t know who Traci Lords was I couldn’t manufacture any anger towards her.

  When I rang him back to express these views to him, he trumped me with the phallic prince of 1980s and 1990s porno, Ron Jeremy. Jewish. Born Hyatt. What did I make of that?

  ‘Errol, any fool can see he’s Jewish. And what is more, Jeremy as a surname sounds far more Jewish to me than Hyatt does. It even begins with the first two letters of Jew. Sorry, but I don’t think we can charge him with anything. Except filth, that is.’

  ‘Whatever you say. You’re the filth artist. Which is presumably why you have a soft spot for this Francine bint.’

  ‘Francine bint? If you’re talking about Francine Bryson-Smith, I don’t have a soft spot for her. But how come you know her, anyway?’

  ‘As always, we have a friend in common, Max.’

  ‘Errol, Francine’s not my friend.’

  ‘I don’t mean her. I mean Kennard Chitty.’

  ‘The nose man?’

  ‘As opposed to . . . ? How many Kennard Chittys are there?’

  ‘Well, I know just the one. But how do you know him?’

  ‘I could ask you the same thing, Max.’

  ‘I haemorrhage from the nostril, Errol. Chitty was my first stop before the otolaryngologist. What’s your excuse? You don’t need a nose job. You’ve barely got a nose.’

  ‘It isn’t strictly me that has the connection. It’s Melanie. She went to see him, just between ourselves, to get her breasts done.’

  ‘Melanie went to Kennard Chitty to get her breasts done! Errol, forgive me, but you can’t have bigger breasts than Melanie’s.’

  ‘To have them made smaller, shmuck. But that’s confidential. You aren’t to say anything when you see her—’

  ‘Like where have your tits gone, Melanie—’

  ‘I knew I could count on you.’

  ‘Won’t you be desolate?’

  ‘She didn’t go through with it. He dissuaded her.’

  ‘He dissuaded me too. And I don’t mean from having my breasts redu
ced. But this is unusual behaviour, wouldn’t you say, from a plastic surgeon.’

  ‘His heart’s not in it. His heart’s in Jesus.’

  ‘I know that. That’s why he wouldn’t touch my nose. He won’t cut into Jews because that would be like cutting into the body of Jesus. Do you think that’s why he dissuaded Melanie?’

  ‘Well, if he can see any trace of Jesus in Melanie, good luck to him. But, yes, he gives her a lot of literature. She burns it all when she gets home, but I think she secretly fancies him. No one’s offered her the missionary position for years.’

  ‘And you put up with him trying to make a Christian of your wife?’

  ‘Listen, it gets her out of the house. And anyway, you know my motto. Know your enemy. Which is why I’m ringing you. This Francine Bryson-Shmyson whatever the fuck she calls herself. Be careful. No, don’t be careful, be gone.’

  ‘Are you telling me she’s in cahoots with Kennard Chitty? I have to tell you she hasn’t tried to missionarise me yet.’

  ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute. We were at Chitty’s last week, having dinner. He buys his wine from me, not that that’s relevant. This Francine bird was there. Sexy woman. I can see why you might be interested—’

  ‘Errol—’

  ‘Let me finish. There were a couple of your cartoons on the wall. One Jew saying this or that to another Jew. Signed. Not that they needed to be signed for me to recognise the hand of a master.’

  ‘If you’ve rung me to discuss my work, Errol—’

  ‘I haven’t. You know what I think – half of what you do I love, the other half wouldn’t be out of place in Hitler’s bedroom. But never mind that. “This is a coincidence,” I said, “Maxie Glickman’s my best friend. We grew up in the same street. We went to the same school.” “You think that’s a coincidence?” Francine says. “He ‘s doing work for me this minute.” “A cartoon?” “A script.” “Maxie writes scripts?” “Well, a treatment anyway.” “Subject?” “Confidential at this stage. But it’s based on the story of someone Max knew who murdered his parents. You might even remember the case yourself.” “Jewish?” “As it happens, yes.” As it happens, fuck you, lady. Max, of course I remember that meshuggeneh friend of yours, and what you want to do with him is your affair. What do I care? He got what he deserved. For all I know his poor parents, alevasholam, got what they deserved. But why with this woman? Couldn’t you smell it on her? I knew as soon as I saw her. Maybe her name rang a bell. Maybe I’d even seen her picture. And I’m prepared to concede that I was suspicious of the theology of anyone I might find at Kennard Chitty’s table even before we got there. But I swear I sniffed it in the room the minute we entered. They say they smell it on us – you know James Joyce’s joke: “the fetor judaicus is most perceptible”. I say the fetor anti-judaicus is just as perceptible on them. Max, she reeks of it.’

  ‘If you’re telling me she’s an anti-Semite you’re not telling me anything new. Of course she’s an anti-Semite. They’re all anti-Semites. They can’t help it. They drink it in with their mothers’ milk. And compared to some of the anti-Semites I’ve been married to—’

  ‘Max, I’m not talking your ordinary friendly neighbourhood anti-Semite. This one’s a Nazi. She’s the real thing, Max. She’s one of them. I’ve dug up more stuff on her than you’ve got years left to read. Do you know what her other current project is, beside you?’

  ‘I seem to recall her mentioning Vanunu.’

  ‘Well, that should have told you something in itself. Who else would want to do Vanunu? But this is better. You know that our civilised allies the Egyptians serialised The Protocols of the Elders of Zion for television recently . . . Well, your new friend has been trying to buy the rights to distribute it selectively here and in America. For the public good, needless to say.’

  ‘It’s an argument. Someone needs to show us what the Arab world thinks a Jew is.’

  ‘Don’t be naïve, Max. We know what the Arab world thinks a Jew is. They think a Jew is whatever the Nazi bastards tell them he is. They’re just a bit slow catching up with the literature. What I’m saying to you is that you have to look at what she’s up to altogether. Put The Protocols libel with Vanunu. Put the two of them with what she’s getting you to do – the story of a frum Yiddisher boy with his tzitzis hanging out who kills his family. That sound like a portfolio of even-handedness to you? She’s a conspiracist, Max, and doesn’t even try to hide it. Did you ever take a look at what she’s made? A nice nasty little earner about Jews controlling Hollywood, but not so nasty that only the crazies would watch. A docudrama about the Rosenbergs, ditto. A socalled science programme about the Jews who made the bomb. And a film, still to be released, detailing the greater cruelty shown to Jewish prisoners by Jewish Kapos than by the SS. Put them together and what have you got? – Bibbitty Bobbitty Boo. Plus she’s a paid-up revisionist, and if she doesn’t admit to being a straight-down-the-line Holocaust-denier she spends a hell of a lot of her time fucking with people who do. Remember Zundel? Distributor of Did Six Million Really Die?. She visited him in prison in Toronto. I’ve got a snap of her standing outside the gates holding roses. White fucking roses, Max. I’ll email it to you. And I’ll email you another one of her shmoozing with Klan members at a hate rally in Mississippi. I’m not joking. And you want to see the way they’re looking at her. Even under their fucking hoods you can see they’re smitten. Now I’m joking. But in fact I’m not joking.’

  ‘I believe you’re not joking,’ I said. ‘But if what you say is true, how does she think she can get away with it? She’s not exactly an invisible person.’

  ‘Who’s checking? As long as she isn’t found on her knees in a Jewish cemetery with a can of spray paint in her hand, no one cares. So she shmoozes with racists? Big deal. That’s not exactly going to make her stand out in this country. The Mitford sisters canoodled with Der Führer in public view, and we still have a soft spot for them. The English like a girl to show a bit of spirit. Had Hitler cut a deal with us, Unity might have been our first lady.’

  ‘She’s a programme-maker, Errol. They might like a girl to show a bit of spirit, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to transmit a hate programe.’

  ‘Don’t be a shmuck all your life. She won’t be making hate programmes. Would she have come to you for a hate programme? She ‘ll just whittle away, Max. A dig here, a wound there. Undermine, undermine. And the more often she can find a willing Jew like you to do it for her – Jew eat Jew – the cleaner her hands will look. She’s lethal, Max. She’s lethal because she’s white, because she’s English, because she’s educated, because she’s plausible, because she’s not frightened, because she fits in, because she’s beautiful, because she’s got a middle-class voice, because she’s got nice tits, and because she’s a woman. That’s enough to fool a lot of people into believing they’re talking to a reasonable, warm-hearted educated human being who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Especially the woman bit. It fooled you.’

  Did it? Or had I nosed her out as well? Had I nosed her out and not minded? Or even nosed her out and liked it, whatever I smelt?

  A queer, weightless sensation of surpriselessness floated through me like lethargy. At the last there are no revelations. Everything has been there at the beginning, always will be there at the beginning, everything you will ever need to know, waiting in the baby fist of time. You prise the fingers open or you don’t. Good for Errol. He’d rip the hand off if he had to. I – I was a gentler soul.

  ‘I’m listening,’ I said.

  ‘You want more? I’ve finished. That’s it. You can have all I’ve got on her. I’m not making a word of it up. If you want my advice I’d shtupp her and then get the hell out.’

  ‘We always did things differently, you and me, Errol.’

  ‘What does that mean? You’re going to go on working with her?’

  ‘No. But I won’t be shtupping her either.’

  ‘Pity,’ Errol said. ‘I’d hoped you might bring her round to watch a video.�
��

  6

  I rang the next day and asked to take her out for lunch. You don’t hang about when you know the Nazis are after you. For old times’ sake I suggested the rabbit-hutch restaurant in Soho, halfway down the passage a dog wouldn’t piss in.

  ‘It’s not happening,’ I told her.

  Hardly a surprise to her. I too had been waiting in the baby fist of time. Not someone she had ever trusted much in the first place, I hadn’t contacted her for weeks, hadn’t answered her calls and finally, in a dead voice, had invited her out.

  My treat, Francine.

  Of course it wasn’t happening.

  She inclined her head at a folder of papers I’d brought with me. ‘Treatment?’ she asked. Good joke. You know when someone has got a stash of evidence against you on the table. But she was daring me to deliver. She was brazen, I had to give her that. She looked utterly unworried by anything I meant to say to her or show her.

  ‘People are allowed to hate Jews,’ I said.

  She fixed me with her green, fascinator’s glimmer. Funny, how it helped some women to have bad eyesight.

  ‘Who hates Jews? I don’t hate Jews.’

  ‘Some of your best friends . . .’

  ‘Well, you said it.’

  ‘Francine,’ I said, ‘why did you take my photograph?’

  ‘I am not aware that I ever did take your photograph.’

  ‘In this restaurant. You got a waiter to take a photograph of us together.’

  ‘Ah, that’s different. I like to have photographs of people I work with. I’m sentimental like that. Why do you find it sinister?’

  It was a hard question to answer. The reason I found it sinister was that I believed that somewhere there was a photographic archive of Francine with Jews, which would one day be brought out and adduced as evidence of how much she liked them. And they her. But I couldn’t quite say that without sounding like a megalomaniac.

  I tapped the file. ‘Photographs can be very damning,’ I said.

  ‘They can also be faked.’

  ‘Why would anyone want to fake your photograph?’