Out of Such Darkness (8 page)

It’s five days since the MC moved into Jay’s head as the train carried them away from Manhattan. Without the routine of work, Jay has moments of idleness and this is when he feels the MC’s presence most keenly. He’s partly inured to the chatter that runs like shop-floor musak as he goes about his day but worries that when he has a new idea it may not be his alone. For instance, he wonders how he came to be reading Isherwood’s Berlin novels. Whoever suggested it, he comforts himself that it will bring him closer to Ben.

The novels’ unemotional tone surprises him. They’re clearly autobiographical, but the narrator appears to be dispassionate about the plight of the people he interacts with – all, that is, except the boys. He truly is ‘a camera’ panning around the Berlin scene. Using the Internet, Jay learns that Isherwood wrote an autobiography concentrating on his time in Berlin called
Christopher and His Kind
and he decides to ask Prentice about it. Whenever he turns on his computer, Jay routinely follows the new leads about Isherwood,
Cabaret
and Berlin that
Yahoo!
throws up.

Next day, Jay plays soccer on the field behind the house. It’s the usual pick-up game with his side made up of Americans and English-speaking Europeans while the opponents are locals who speak Spanish as their first language. The players arrive already changed and the game starts without any reference to the week’s main event. There’s none of the customary banter afterwards and the desultory conversation is, by unspoken mutual consent, steered away from Ground Zero. It makes for an awkward few minutes but Jay’s happy at the respite.

Later, he and Rachel potter around the garden. Jay rakes up the early leaves, notices Bob Cochrane doing the same and strikes up a conversation during which he learns that residents make piles of the leaves in the road in front of their houses and the town takes them away for composting.

‘Did
you
know about the town collecting the leaves?’ he asks Rachel over dinner that evening.

‘I didn’t even know there was a “town”’

‘I think it may be the same Burford Lakes Authority that runs the station car park.’

‘I thought that was Amtrak’

‘No, I have to buy the season ticket from that municipal kiosk opposite the station.’

‘Seems weird that they take the leaves away yet leave us with the hassle of organising our own rubbish collection.’

‘Trash,’ Ben says.

‘Yes, trash.’ Rachel nods as if filing the word away. ‘And the telephone and satellite TV. However does anyone move house in this country? And they keep telling us that they’re the top dogs in customer service. I could tell them a thing or two–’

Jay pats her on the hand. ‘You’ve had a hard time, I know.’

‘You don’t know the half of it.’

‘Rachel–’

‘You don’t and there’s no point to it. You have no job. There’s no money coming in. Why can’t we go home?’

Ben puts down his knife and fork. ‘Hey! Don’t forget about me. We can’t leave mid-semester – I can’t drop everything. What about the show?’

Your son is talking sense, Jay. Listen to him.

‘The show! The bloody show. You and your dad and that bloody show.’

What about your colleagues, Jay? Your dead colleagues – are you going to abandon them?

Tears fill Jay’s eyes. ‘We can’t leave, not yet. What about the people I worked with–’

‘You didn’t even know them, Jay. Not most of them.’

There has to be ‘closure’. Was that me? Did I use the word ‘closure’, actually?

‘I don’t understand it myself but I have to see it through. There are going to be memorials, services, whatever. I’ll have to go at least for Francois, for Glen, for Nancy. Maybe not the others. But I have to be there for them.’

‘And whatever you say about the show, Mum, I can’t let them down. I have to stay until the end of the semester.’

Rachel snaps her head round to face her son. ‘It’s a “term”. Ben. It’s a bloody term!’

All three are shocked into silence. Rachel’s voice starts up, softer: ‘How can we manage with nothing coming in, Jay?’

He tries to sound as if she has lifted the mood. ‘I spoke to the lawyer guy who set up the SDC partnership. We have a meeting next week. Straub, DuCheyne still exists in some format. There’ll be enough cash in the business to keep my pay going for a while, I’m sure. I’ll know more at the end of the week. I’m going to the place in Stamford where they have the company’s disaster recovery set-up.’

The technical talk pricks Ben’s interest, ‘What’s that, Dad?’

‘Where all the data back-ups are. There was a download of all the day’s outputs onto a duplicate server in Stamford every night. So it wasn’t lost when … when we lost the servers in New York.’

‘But
you
can’t run the company – not on your own,’ Rachel says.

‘No, it’ll close down. But it has to be done properly.’

‘So we
will
go home.’

‘Yes.’

‘When?’ Rachel and Ben say in unison.

Ben is upstairs working on an assignment or more likely sending e-mails to his classmates and his old friends in England. Jay is on the sofa with Rachel. They’re reading. The boiler in the half-cellar ignites and the pipes start ticking.

Jay lifts his head. ‘Have you spoken to Ben about
Cabaret
recently.’

‘No, why?’

‘Just wondered.’ He turns to face her. ‘You’ve seen the film haven’t you?’

‘Yes. Ages ago.’

‘I’ve still got the video.’

She sighs. ‘Not now. I’m reading.’

‘No. I wasn’t suggesting we watch it.’ He had finished the movie after Nathan Fothergill’s interruption but has ignored the MC’s urgings to watch it again.

She lets the book fall into her lap.

‘Is it okay? I’d just like to explain something.’

Rachel composes her features into the face of a person giving him all her attention. ‘Go ahead.’

‘I’ve been looking it up on the Internet –
Cabaret.
But the musical, not the film. The musical came first.’

‘So?’

‘What Ben is doing isn’t actually in the film. It seems that the way this scene has been used in the musical is quite fluid but the song always appears twice and it’s only the second time, when it’s sung at a party, that it becomes sinister.’

‘I thought I told you this. Anyway, is it a problem – how it’s done?’ Her finger is keeping her place and she flicks the book open.

‘I need to have it clear in my mind.’

‘Why?’

‘I want to help Ben … with his part … the motivation. It’s not like the film that they watched. It’s entirely different. The song’s in a different context.’

Rachel casts her eyes down to the page. ‘Is it important?’

He sighs. ‘I don’t know. But there’s a connection here with this whole 9/11 thing. I don’t know whether there are parallels – and that the play might be more topical than the school thinks.’

‘And …?’

Jay squirms. ‘I don’t know. But have you noticed how everybody’s putting flags out?’

‘I don’t see the connection.’

‘I’m worried about what’s going to happen. Is there going to be a backlash against Muslims? Everybody seems to be flying a Stars and Stripes all of a sudden. What if it gets, you know, like Germany and the Jews?’

‘You’re thinking too much. Adding two and two–’

‘But it’s on everybody’s minds. What about the guy they arrested at JFK because of his turban. He was a Sikh for God’s sake. They thought he was a Muslim. It’s all going crazy.’

Rachel’s finger traces the words. ‘I don’t see how it relates to the show, Jay. I honestly don’t.’

‘Nationalist fervour, Rache. The parallel with the song.
Fatherland, Fatherland
, all that stuff. Is it a good thing
now
?’

She closes the book and places it on the coffee table. ‘It’s a school show – a tiny High School in a tiny town in a huge country.’ She pats his arm. ‘Have another glass of wine – you’ll feel better.’ She sweeps up their glasses and climbs the few steps to the kitchen.

Jay stays on the sofa. There
is
a parallel between post 9/11 America and 1930s Germany but it’s not clear yet. It has something to do with retribution. The Nazis identified the Jews as having been to blame for defeat in the First World War and now the Americans – the hawks among them anyway – have a culprit in their midst to blame for the worst atrocity since Pearl Harbor.

You’re on the right track, Jay. I will help you tease it out.

Is there something here that would give his survival a purpose?

You may think you have a destiny, Jay. Have patience. Your fate will become clear.

Where did that come from? At times the MC’s presence is as real as if he’s in the room. This is when Jay is reassured that the demon is there merely to voice his darker thoughts. But at other times, when the voice is less distinct, the things he hears sound alien – as if the MC is a discrete entity. Inside his head but detached.

Jay’s heart rate quickens and his ears whoosh with blood. The voice emerges through the static.
If only I could reassure you that I have it all under my control.

It’s Tuesday, one week on. It had seemed to Jay that time would stop and yet here he is. He’s waiting at the screen door when Howard’s 4×4 parks next to the first feeble pile of leaves. Jay goes down and clambers into the passenger seat.

‘Ready?’ Howard says.

‘Yes.’ Jay’s hands are sweaty. It’s too late to backtrack.

‘Don’t worry.’ Howard manoeuvres out of the estate. ‘Rabbi Zwyck is a sweety. You’ll like her.’ Howard turns onto Route 22 and within ten minutes they pass through the more modern locality of Burford Station. It’s seven o’clock in the evening. There are still some commuters’ cars parked under the floodlights. Two have a talcum-like layer of white dust spread over them as if they’ve been abandoned next to a flour mill. These ‘ghost cars’ are present, in their ones or twos, in every station car park within commuting distance of Manhattan. They’ve been featured in the local television news. Families don’t want to move them. It would be a sign that they’ve given up hope.

‘So what will she ask me?’ A tremor ripples in his right knee.

The bison’s head turns. Howard has kind eyes, eyes that reflect a deep sadness.

They are
proper
Jew’s eyes.

‘Today is more about the questions you have for the rabbi, I would’ve thought.’

They’re in one of the wooded sectors of Westchester County. The tall, orange-foliaged trees join above the road and Howard switches on the main beams. The branches toss and turn in the moving light.

Howard swings the Jeep into a drive leading to a low, contemporary building in which windows shine with colours of the rainbow. It squats like a bejewelled frog beneath its copper canopy. ‘Here we are,’ Howard says. ‘Temple Bar Shalom.’

He leads Jay to the left of the heavy oak double-doors which, Jay assumes, open into the place of worship and heads for a smaller, side door. Howard presses a button for the intercom.

The woman’s voice is sing-song. ‘Hello?’

‘Elayna, it’s Howard Edler. We have an appointment?’

‘Of course, come in.’ A buzz signals that she’s unlocked the door.

Howard touches the Mezuzah and Jay wonders whether he should copy him.

Ach! The terrors the Mezuzah holds for the non-Jew.

Jay freezes. He’s too uptight to follow Howard’s example. He decides that the visit to Rabbi Zwyck is a bad idea.

A woman dressed in a flower-patterned frock comes into the hall. Her belted waist emphasises the heft of her bosom and the shelf of her hips. She totters forward as if she’s unfamiliar with high heels but Jay notices that she’s in flats. ‘Come in! Come in!’ She shakes hands with Howard and turns to Jay. ‘You must be Jacob.’

Jay nods. He can only choke out ‘Rabbi’ and he bows his head.

She smiles as if familiar with his confusion. ‘Call me Elayna, please. I reserve my title for when I’m working.’ She leads them into a small room off the hallway which is set out as an office. The desk faces the sidewall and there is one chair between it and the door. Rabbi Zwyck wrestles another from the opposite wall and sets it alongside. ‘Come. Sit.’ Her eyes sparkle as she says, ‘Howard tells me you’re a sinner who wants to return to the fold, Jacob.’

Jay turns to his companion. What has Howard said? He can feel the blood filling the capillaries of his cheeks and forehead. He smiles and shakes his head. His eyes fill with hot tears.

‘I’m sorry,’ Elayna says. ‘It was a bad joke. It was meant to put you at your ease.’ She stands up. Her upholstered bosom is at Jay’s eye level.

You could rest a tea tray on that.

She says, ‘Let’s start again. Can I offer you coffee, tea?’

Howard turns down his lower slug-like lip and passes his right hand over his lap like a conjurer about to produce a rabbit. To say no would have been less bother. Jay says, ‘Tap-water is just fine.’

The rabbi leaves the room and Howard and Jay sit in silence. A tower of hardcover textbooks with muted dust-covers sits on the desk to one side of the virgin blotter. A large-format diary is on the other side. It’s closed. Jay wonders what’s written about this meeting. On the wall in front of the desk is a year-on-show wall chart. It’s set up in an unfamiliar style and its boxes are tagged with unreadable symbols.

The door opens and Elayna bustles in with two glasses. Hers has iced tea. She settles into her chair and her upper body concertinas downwards as if her backbone is collapsing. ‘Now, tell me, Jay.’ She talks softly while she reaches for her tea. ‘Why did you want to come see me?’

This, I want to hear.

Rachel looks up from her book as Jay enters. ‘How did it go?’

‘Okay.’

‘Well, what did she say?’

‘She said I can go to services if I want.’ Her wine glass needs filling. ‘Want a top-up?’

‘Yes please.’ She holds out the glass. He goes up to the kitchen and pours one for himself. Back in the den he sits next to her on the blue sofa. ‘Nothing on telly?’

‘No. Is there ever?’ She holds up the glass. ‘Cheers! Anyway, I want to hear what happened.’