The Death of Eli Gold

by David Baddiel

  Joe, who has gone into a brown study, looks up at Kirsty. ‘Hm?’

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind leaving the chair for the minute. Obviously, we’ll come back to your story later.’

  Joe rises. He stays there for a moment, his hands pushing the flaps of his tweed jacket into his body. There is a sense in the room that he has failed the Life Story Work test; that he has been bumped, like a chat-show guest, for someone more famous, or, in this case, for someone with more access to fame.

  Violet looks at his vacant chair, then back at Kirsty and Daniel. Daniel has his finger ready to release the pause button on the video camera. She actually gets up – what am I doing? she thinks, why am I doing this? – and the words begin to form in her mind, bursting to get out. It has been so long.

  ‘He is not my cousin. He is my husband. He was my husband. I am Violet Gold, the first wife of Eli Gold. The world’s greatest living writer, although we did not know that then. We were married for ten years, between 1944 and 1954. Ten years, during which I was not happy, or at peace, nor even clear about what I was doing married to this person; but they remain the ten years that form the … that form the … the Key Stage Moment of My Life Story Work.’

  ‘Eli Gold? You were married to Eli Gold?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Sorry, Violet, but … are you making this up?’

  ‘Why would I make it up?’

  ‘I don’t know. It just sounds … wouldn’t we know this already, Kirsty?’

  ‘No one told me, Daniel.’

  ‘I’m not making it up. He made me up. I am Queenie. I am Queenie. I am Queenie.’

  ‘Oh, my God, she’s … please, Violet, pull your dress down … not on the lounge floor … nurse, quickly!’

  All this goes through her mind as she makes her way gingerly round the semi-circle and towards the Life Story Work chair. She halts briefly when she gets there, her fingers resting on the top of it. The nine other inmates have become an audience. She sees the red light go on at the side of the video camera, a pinprick of red, like blood from the tip of a finger. She opens her mouth, at last, to speak.

  ‘I know what my Key Stage Moment is, if it’s any help …’

  It is not her voice. She and all the others look over to the door. It is Meg Antopolski, in a wheelchair. She looks – well, she looks like Meg: white hair, brown eyes, Roman nose. She has not had that thing happen after a fall, where the fallen person no longer looks like themselves. There is a collective gasp from the room, not so much at the drama of her interruption of Violet, but at the fact that she is not dead. Pat Cadogan even looks a bit put out.

  ‘Sorry, Violet,’ says Meg, wheeling herself in, ‘but I’ve been reading up about all this while I’ve been in hospital – you get a lot of time to read there … and when you stopped there, by the chair, I got the impression that maybe you weren’t so keen on talking to everybody after all. Am I right?’

  Violet, not knowing quite what to say, looks to Norma, who laughs and shrugs. Next to her is Pat Cadogan, who looks directly back with a face that says, What did I tell you? Always barging in.

  ‘No, that’s fine, Meg, please,’ she says. ‘You go. So pleased to see you back.’

  ‘Sorry, who’s this?’ says Daniel, now making no attempt to hide the exasperation in his voice.

  ‘Meg Antopolski, love. Write it down, even though I’m sure you’ll spell it wrong. Help me with this stupid cartie, someone.’

  Kirsty comes to Meg and wheels her chair forward. Violet moves back towards the chair she was in before, although she does not sit down.

  ‘Ready for my close-up, Mr de Mille,’ says Meg.

  And then Meg Antopolski goes on to say that she has had many Key Stage Moments in her life, but she knows now that the Key Stage Moment of Key Stage Moments, the thing that defines her, is her fall. That in the instant of collapse on the white enamel floor of her shower, she was presented with the perfect choice: either to stay there curled up in a ball, ready to die of hypothermia, or somehow reach the panic button. And that this perfect choice – whether to give up or to carry on – continued throughout her time in hospital. That is the Key Stage Moment, she goes on to say: choosing between death or life. It’s a choice we all make, every day, but for us, you see, Daniel, Kirsty, it’s not a background thing. We wade through it all the time, like soldiers in a swamp.

  She goes on to say all this, or something like it. Violet is not sure. She is listening but she cannot hear her that clearly. Meg’s voice buzzes in her hearing aid as she moves away from the group back towards the lift, one step at a time.

  Chapter 15

  EG: Yes? RW: The first question is: what age were all your wives? When you left them, I mean. You have left them all, haven’t you? None of them have left you … why would they?

  EG: Again, I really can’t see the relevance of this …

  RW: Humour me, Mr Gold. You’ll be out of here in no time.

  [pause]

  EG: I have parted from all my wives by mutual consent. Except, of course, Pauline …

  RW: Well. It was mutual consent.

  EG: I beg your pardon?

  RW: I’d call a suicide pact mutual consent. Wouldn’t you?

  EG: Very clever. Very good.

  [pause]

  >RW: So?

  EG: What?

  RW: The age … of your wives. When you left them. By mutual consent.

  EG: Oh, Christ, I don’t know. Violet was thirty, I guess. Isabelle … yes, she was thirty-five. Joan, probably – thirty-seven.

  RW: What’s the cut-off point, do you think?

  EG: I beg your pardon?

  RW: For women.

  EG: Cut-off point?

  RW: Come on, Eli. It’s just me and you here. I’ll turn off the tape recorder if you like.

  [pause]

  RW: What’s the cut-off point? When does the door shut? When do they turn into being on the turn? When do they become imperfect?

  EG: What the fuck?

  RW: What’s the Fellini age? You know, like in that movie? The broads got to a certain age and they got kicked upstairs and that was that.

  [pause]

  RW: He was a great man, too, of course, Federico. So I guess that was why it was OK.

  EG: I don’t know, Webb. I don’t know what the fucking Fellini age is.

  RW: You do. You’re the king of knowing that. I bet you could pinpoint it like a sniper.

  [pause]

  EG: Thirty-seven.

  RW: Thirty-seven? Not forty?

  EG: Forty’s too obvious. Forty would be the answer of an unoriginal mind. Besides – as some people say who are in relationships with people much older or much younger than they are – it’s just a number. One shouldn’t isolate an age because it’s round, because it has a zero.

  RW: And thirty-seven is not just a number?

  EG: I meant, as I’m sure a man of your delicate perception could have registered, a certain essence of thirty-seven. Or perhaps a certain essence of thirty-six, which is lost at thirty-seven.

  RW: Right. I see.

  [pause; the sound of laughter]

  EG: Oh, my God, your face. Really thinking about it. A picture of earnestness and consideration. I’m fucking with you, Webb, can you not see that?

  [pause]

  RW: Of course you are. You were joking.

  EG: Oh yes.

  RW: You love a joke, don’t you? Great men do. Great – what do they call it? – ‘post-modern’ men. They love the comic; they get such a hard-on, don’t they, for irony. Irony is like a religion, isn’t it, for men like you. Nothing a man like you puts down in words can ever be quite true. Every day, every page, every chapter, a new way to fuck with the world.

  EG: Oh Christ … how much more of this …

  RW: You know, I read this quote once. You’ll know it. ‘There is no better starting point for thought than laughter …’ How does it go …?

  EG: ‘Spasms of the diaphragm generally offer better chances for tho
ught than spasms of the soul.’ Walter Benjamin.

  RW: Walter Benjamin. Of course.

  EG: He’s right, though, isn’t he, Commissioner? Where would we be without those spasms of the diaphragm?

  RW: A very bad place, I’m sure. I mean, you should know, Eli. You’re joking now: but three weeks ago, to be exact – you had, wherefore you knew not, lost all your mirth.

  [pause]

  RW: How old was Pauline, Mr Gold?

  EG: She was thirty-seven. And you can go fuck yourself.

  * * *

  Waiting at the lights on 125th and Malcolm X Boulevard, Harvey Gold looks through the smeary taxi windows at the people outside. There are many of them on the sidewalk at this time of the morning, going to diners, going to work. One of them, although not a tramp – he is wearing a smart suit, from a designer who Harvey, if he was a different type of man, could probably name – is doing a tramp thing, standing there looking into the road, with his mouth open. He holds it wide open, although not quite wide enough to be a yawn. It looks to Harvey like he is screaming, although they are close enough to hear him, and he can’t. It makes Harvey think about the human face, and its Emmenthal number of holes. Nose, mouth, ears, eye sockets: what’s inside, so open to the elements.

  ‘Was he a good president?’

  He looks over. Elaine came this morning before breakfast, and dressed Colette. She is wearing a sky-blue dress and pink tights, and her frizzy hair has been combed almost straight. He had watched as Elaine had done this, methodically, tugging and pulling the strands free of knots like some dour ancient weaver, and had been amazed at how stoically Colette had accepted it. Elaine had left immediately afterwards. Harvey had thought she might want to come to the hospital, but she just laughed and said, ‘Not for me: I voted for Ross Perot. Twice.’

  ‘Yeah, I think. I don’t really know. I was in Britain the whole time he was president.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Um … I dunno. Sixty-something, I guess.’

  ‘Quite young, then.’

  Harvey looks at her serious small face. He decides not to contradict her.

  ‘Why did he stop being president?’

  ‘Well, you have to, after eight years.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. I remember that now.’

  ‘And also, he got into all that shit with the fat intern chick …’ Harvey looks up. It is the driver. He is a squat man, completely bald: two rolls of fat protrude neatly from the back of his neck like frankfurters. ‘The cigar, the dress stains … “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” – Oh, Jesus, it takes me back …’

  ‘Excuse me?’ says Harvey.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Do you mind? There is a child in the back here.’

  His heart beats faster, like it always does with any confrontation, however small. He envisages the taxi driver immediately locking the doors and driving them to some street, some Bronx junction of Knife Crime Boulevard and Gang Violence Ave, and demanding that they get out right there. But the fat on the back of his neck just twitches a little, and his eyes in the rear-view mirror go blank.

  Harvey doesn’t turn to look at Colette immediately: it crosses his mind that she may not have liked this intervention – he has seen how little she likes being described as a child. Much of life – and death – seems to have been laid out for her already. I am a fool, he thinks, for shutting the stable door so long after that horse has been put out to stud.

  He sits back, and to avoid her gaze buttons his jacket up. He is in a suit; or, at least, matching trousers and jacket. He was not sure what to wear for this visit. Just as on the non-date with Lark, he had felt superstitious about wearing the black suit prematurely. Instead, he put on the dark blue jacket that he wore for his first visit to Mount Sinai, and then, after some uncertainty – and another nervous trip into his sort-of parents’ bedroom – found a pair of Eli’s trousers of round about the same navy colour. They are too small for him – his father, despite his extreme appetite for food, has always managed to stay wiry, a physical trait consolidated, in the last few years, by cancer – but Harvey has managed to get them on by doing up the far catch and leaving the nearer one undone. Which means that his fly is open at the top. Which is why it is a good idea that he is buttoning up his jacket.

  ‘Would you like some gum?’ says Colette. He turns. She is chewing radically, like kids sometimes do, overdoing the facial movement.

  ‘Er …’ he says. It’s tempting: it’s early in the morning and he is worried his breath might smell. He is worried about meeting Bill Clinton with smelly breath. ‘I would but when I chew gum I get terrible hunger pains.’

  ‘Hunger pains?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s like if you chew gum, your brain thinks you’re eating. And then your stomach acid gets all churned up, and if no actual food comes through … I dunno, it kind of attacks your own intestine or something.’

  ‘There’s acid in your stomach?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s what breaks the food down.’

  ‘But how come it doesn’t … like … burn through your skin. Like through your belly button or something?’

  Harvey shakes his head. He feels as if he can make out the contours of his belly button against the waistband of his father’s trousers. ‘Yes, I really don’t know the answer to that. You’d have to ask your biology teacher at school.’

  Colette nods. ‘I haven’t been to school for ages. I did go, but when Daddy started to get ill Mommy took me out, so I did home schooling. Elaine does a lot of it.’

  ‘OK. Well, maybe ask her.’

  ‘Hunger … pains.’ She seems to be committing the phrase to memory with each chew. She takes the sticky wet ball out of her mouth, and looks at it with concern.

  ‘It’s OK. I don’t think everyone gets it from chewing gum, but I do, really badly. I get hunger pains really badly in general. Sometimes when I go out to a restaurant, and the food hasn’t arrived ’cos they’re busy or something, I have to go and lie down in the toilet.’

  She laughs. ‘In the toilet? Why?’

  ‘Because I can’t lie down in the middle of the restaurant.’

  She laughs more, her mouth opening wide. Her teeth have that heartbreaking arranged littleness.

  ‘You could under the table.’

  ‘No. People would kick me.’

  Her eyes sparkle with the idea. She has forgotten that she is going to meet an ex-president. She has forgotten that their father is dying.

  ‘How do you lie down in the toilet?’ she says. ‘There’s not enough room. Specially not for a grown-up.’

  ‘Yes, it is a bit difficult. If you go with having your feet at the toilet end – because the cubicles normally have a bit of a gap between the edge of the door and ground, your head can poke out of that gap. But then, if you go the other way round, you have to put your head where all the poo goes.’

  ‘Urrrrrrrrgggh!’ she says. ‘Shhhh.’ She points at the taxi-driver, whose face is set fixedly forward. ‘He might hear.’

  ‘And sometimes, there’s wee-wee on the floor, too.’

  ‘Harvey! No!’ She touches his arm with her hand, as if to stop him from ever lying down in a toilet again. He smiles: he feels the fondness, familiar to him from hearing one of Jamie’s earnest concerns.

  ‘It’s all right. I don’t do it much these days.’

  She looks at him, eyes wide. ‘Good,’ she says, and puts the ball of gum back in her mouth. Harvey notices something, a flash of green, red and blue on her lap.

  ‘Hold on a sec. What is that gum?’

  She holds up the packet. ‘Sour Razzles.’

  ‘Sour Razzles?’

  ‘It’s not really gum. I don’t know why I called it that. It’s more like little chewy candy.’ She rummages and gets out a small green square. ‘This one’s apple flavour. I love sour candy.’

  He looks at her. He puts the index finger and third finger into a crook, and pinches her round apple-flavoured cheek. She smiles up at him.
>
  ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ says Harvey, picking the green bliss-bomb out of her hand, the saliva already welling in his mouth.

  When they get to the door outside Eli’s room, for the first time for some while John the security guy blocks their way.

  ‘Huh?’ says Harvey.

  He puts a finger to his lips, and raps a knuckle on the glass port-hole. Harvey can see the backs of many men’s heads. A second later, Freda opens the door: she is wearing a black dress suit, a sexy version of widow’s weeds, making Harvey’s heart miss a beat.

  ‘Right. Good,’ she says. Her attitude and voice are clipped, urgent.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ says Harvey.

  ‘Yes, fine, fine. Bill arrived a bit earlier than his office said he would …’

  ‘He’s already here? In there?’ Harvey cranes his neck. Through the glass, he reviews the men’s heads, looking for a back view of grey pompadour.

  ‘Yes. Come in, Colette.’

  Colette, her face in the set expression of a child called upon to behave appropriately during an important moment, passes through the gap in the door. Freda turns away.

  ‘Hello?’ says Harvey. ‘Freda?’

  She turns back. Her face is irritated, someone who does not have time to talk.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Am I … I thought I …?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Aren’t I coming in?’

  She blinks at him, her eyelids fluttering with frustration. ‘No, Harvey, sorry. We had to specify a certain number of people for Bill’s visit, by name.’ Harvey feels someone’s eyes on him: it is John, standing to one side, indicating his clipboard, with a new raft of names on it for today, not including his. ‘And, obviously, with the doctors and nurses around, and all the machinery – it would just be too crowded. I’m sorry. But many, many thanks for getting Colette here on time.’

  She makes to go back in. In that split second, Harvey – who is a man who would normally not do something like this, who would normally let it go, and then just stew with it, going over and over in his head what he should have said, what he would like to have said, picking obsessively at the scab of his weakness – empowered by something, the moment of confrontation in the cab maybe, or perhaps just a deep, deep sense of the unfairness of things, grabs her sleeve.