Solomon Gursky Was Here (64 page)

They needn't bother, Moses thought, bitterly amused. Obviously the raven with the unquenchable itch was at it again, playing tricks on the world and its creatures.
Once by air,
he thought,
and now by water
.

Provost failed to appear again. A frustrated Moses retired to his room, lit a cigar, and considered the package on his bed for a long time before he tore it open.

It contained three morocco-bound volumes of the journals of Solomon Gursky and a letter addressed to Moses Berger, Esq. The letter advised him that he was the recipient of an income of thirty thousand dollars a year to be paid quarterly by Corvus Trust, Zurich.

Moses lay down on the bed, picked up a volume of the journals, and opened it at random.

“Fort McEwen, Alberta. 1908. Late one winter afternoon I found my grandfather waiting for me on his sled outside the school house. Ephraim stank of rum. His cheek was bruised and his lower lip was swollen.…”

Two

A ceiling-to-floor bookcase in the living room of Moses's cabin in the woods was crammed with books, newspaper and magazine clippings relating to the life of the elusive, obscenely rich Sir Hyman Kaplansky, as he then styled himself.

The index of the third volume of the celebrated diaries of a British MP with impeccable Bloomsbury bona fides revealed several entries for Sir Hyman Kaplansky.

May 17, 1944

Lunch at the Travellers with Gladwyn and Chips. We were joined by Hyman Kaplansky, his cultivated dandyish manner insufficient to conceal the ghetto greaser within. He allowed that he was frightened of the V.11s. I suggested that he ought to think of his loved ones on the battlefield who were at far greater risk than he was.

Hyman: “That wouldn't work for me at all, dear boy. I have no loved ones on the battlefield. They are all in firewatching right here. The buggers' battalions, don't you know?”

An earlier entry was dated September 12, 1941.

Dined at the Savoy with Ivor. When Hyman Kaplansky stopped at our table I told him how
triste
I felt about the martyred Jews of Poland and how after Eden had read his statement in the House we all stood up as a tribute.

“If my unfortunate brethren only knew it,” he said, “I'm sure they would feel most obliged. Did the Speaker stand up as well?”

“Yes.”

“How very moving.”

The Jewish capacity for cynicism is really insufferable. Although I loathe anti-Semites, I do dislike Jews.

June 8, 1950

Lunch at the Reform Club. The beastly Sir Hyman is there with Guy and Tom Driberg. Driberg is carrying on about his favoured “cottages” in Soho.

“Why municipal vandals,” he said, “should have thought it necessary to destroy so many of them I do not know. I suppose it is one expression of antihomosexual prejudice. Yet no homo, cottage-cruising, ever prevented a hetero from merely having a whiz. While to do one's rounds of the cottages— the alley by the Astoria, the dog-leg lane opposite the Garrick Club, the one near the Ivy, the one off Wardour Street—provided homos, not all of whom are given to rougher sports, with healthy exercise.”

June 7,1951

Dinner at the Savoy. Sir Hyman Kaplansky at another table, entertaining some of the old Tots and Quots. Zuckerman, Bernal, and Haldane. Everybody is discussing the Burgess-Maclean affair. Sir Hyman says, “I know Guy to be a coward and a Bolshie and I'm not surprised he did a bunk.”

The next entry for Sir Hyman dealt at length with that infamous dinner party in his Cumberland Terrace flat. A Passover
seder,
of all things, to which Sir Hyman—much to Lady Olivia's horror—had invited the MP and other noted anti-Semites. Among them, a couple of survivors of the Cliveden set, an unabashed admirer of Sir Oswald Mosley, a famous novelist, a celebrated actress, a West End impresario, a Polish count and a rambunctious cabinet minister who was an adamant opponent of further Jewish settlement in troubled Palestine. Why did they come?

The novelist, arguably the most gifted of his time, wrote in his diary:

March 21, 1953

All in order for our trip to Menton. I am assured that the villa has been furnished to my taste, the servants will be adequate, and there will be no Americans to be seen. We travel in a filthy carriage to Dover and then board the boat. The usual drunken commercial travellers and this time a number of Jews, presumably tax-evaders. This reminds Sybil that we are expected to dine at Sir Hyman Kaplansky's the evening after our return. The food and wine will be excellent. Certainly no problems with ration coupons in that quarter.

Another diary, this one kept by the actress, reminded her many admirers of exactly what she was wearing (an outfit especially created for her by Norman Hartnell) on the day the Bomb fell on Hiroshima. On another page she revealed for the first time that her only child lay dying in Charing Cross Hospital on the night theatrical tradition obliged her to open in
Peonies for Penelope,
a musical that ran for three years at the Haymarket in spite of the posh critics. An entry dated three days before Sir Hyman's dinner party described a lunch at the Ivy with the West End impresario, a noted sybarite.

April 12, 1953

Signs of the times. At one table a loud infestation of newly affluent proles. GI brides, Cockney accents. But I could hardly afford to eat here any more— if not for Hugh's kindness. Hugh is in a snit about the dinner party at Sir Hyman's.

“Will I be expected to put on one of those silly black beanies I've seen the men wear in Whitechapel?”

“Think of the caviar. He gets it from their embassy. Consider the endless bottles of Dom P. I am told there will be a whole baby lamb.”

“Kosher, I daresay.”

Hugh confessed how deeply he regretted casting Kitty rather than little me in
The Dancing Duchess
. Stuff and nonsense, I told him. I wouldn't hear a word against Kitty. She tries so hard.

Other diaries, memoirs, letter collections and biographies of the period were rich in details of that disastrous night. There were contradictions, of course, each memoir writer laying claim to the evening's most memorable
bons mots
. Other discrepancies related to Lady Olivia, who had been born and raised an Anglican. Some charged that she had treacherously been a party to the insult, but others were equally certain that she was its true victim. Both groups agreed that the Polish count was her lover, but they split again on whether Sir Hyman condoned the relationship, was ignorant of it, or—just possibly—had planned the scandal to avenge himself on both of them. Whatever the case, there was no disputing the main thrust of events, only their interpretation.

Including Sir Hyman and Lady Olivia, there were thirteen at the refectory table, which made for much light-hearted bantering, the mood darkening only when Sir Hyman—insensitive or vindictive, depending on the witness—pointed out that that had been the precise number gathered at the most famous of all Passover noshes.

Every diary and memoir writer mentioned the table setting, describing it either as opulent or all too typically reeking of Levantine ostentation. The wine goblets and decanters were made of late-Georgian flint glass, their hue Waterford blue. The seventeenthcentury candelabra were of a French design, with classic heads and overlapping scales and foliated strapwork. The heavy, ornate silverware was of the same period. Other artifacts were of Jewish origin. There was, for instance, a silver Passover condiment set, its style German Baroque, stamped with fruit and foliage. The
seder
tray itself, the platter on which the offending
matzohs
would lie, was made of pewter. It was eighteenth-century Dutch in origin, unusually large, engraved with Haggadah liturgies, artfully combining the pictorial and calligraphic.

An ebullient Sir Hyman welcomed his guests to the table with a prepared little speech that some would later condemn as grovelling and others, given the shocking turn of events, as a damned impertinence. In the first place, he said, he wished to say how grateful he was that everyone had accepted his invitation, because he knew how prejudiced they were against
some
of his kind. He hardly blamed them. Some of his kind, especially those sprung from eastern Europe, were insufferably pushy and did in fact drive a hard bargain, and to prove his point he quoted some lines of T.S. Eliot:

And the jew squats on the window sill, the owner,

Spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp,

Blistered in Brussels, patched and peeled in London.…

Such people, Sir Hyman said, embarrassed him and other gentlemen of Hebraic origin even more than they were an affront to decent Christians. In a lighter vein, Sir Hyman went on to say that he hoped his guests would find the rituals essential to the Passover feast a welcome little frisson. Each of them would find a little book at their
place. It was called a Haggadah and they should think of it as a libretto. We should tell—that is to say, “hagged”—of our exodus from Egypt, not the last time the Jews did a midnight flit. The Haggadah— like the libretto of any musical in trouble in Boston or Manchester— was being constantly revised to keep pace with the latest Jewish bad patch. He had seen one, for instance, that included a child's drawing of the last
seder
held in Theresienstadt. The drawing, alas, was without any artistic merit, but—it could be argued—did have a certain maudlin charm. He had seen another one that made much of the fact that the Nazi all-out artillery attack on the grouchy Jews of the Warsaw ghetto had begun on the eve of Passover. A man who had survived that kerfuffle only to perish in a concentration camp later on had written, “We are faced with a Passover of hunger and poverty, without even ‘the bread of affliction'. For eating and drinking there is neither
matzoh
nor wine. For prayer there are no synagogues or houses of study. Their doors are closed and darkness reigns in the dwelling-places of Israel.” However, Sir Hyman hastily pointed out, we have come here not to mourn but to be jolly. He beamed at Lady Olivia, who responded by jiggling a little bell. Servants refilled the champagne glasses at once.

Seder,
Sir Hyman informed his captive audience, seemingly indifferent to their growing restiveness, literally means programme, which applies to the prescribed ceremonies of the Passover ritual. Raising the pewter
matzoh
platter, he proclaimed first in Hebrew and then in English: “This is the bread of affliction which our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt. Let all who are hungry come and eat.”

“Hear, hear!”

“Goodo!”

It was now nine
P.M.
, and though Sir Hyman's guests had begun to arrive as early as six, there had—much to their chagrin—been no hors-d'oeuvres served. Not so much as a wizened olive or peanut or blade of celery. Stomachs were rumbling. Appetites were keen. Sensing his guests' impatience, Sir Hyman hurried through the reading of the Haggadah that necessarily preceded the feast, skipping page after page. Even so, he had to be aware of the shifting of chairs, the fidgeting that verged on the hostile, the raising of eyebrows, the
dark looks. It did not help matters that each time the kitchen doors swung open the dining room was filled with the most tantalizing aromas. Steaming chicken broth. Lamb on the sizzle. Finally, at ten
P.M.
, Sir Hyman nodded at an increasingly distressed Lady Olivia, who promptly jiggled her little bell.

Ah.

There were gasps of pleasure as a huge, wobbly, gleaming mound of beluga caviar was set down on the table. Next came an enormous platter of pleasingly moist smoked salmon. The salmon was followed by a silver salver heavy with baked carp and a surround of golden jelly. Everybody was set to pounce, but Sir Hyman, his smile gleeful, raised a restraining hand. “Wait, please. There is one more protocol of Zion, as it were, to be observed. Before indulging ourselves we are obliged to eat the bread of affliction. The
matzoh
.”

“Let's get on with it, then.”

“For God's sake, Hymie, I'm hungry enough to eat a horse.”

“Hear, hear!”

Sir Hyman nodded and a servant removed the pewter
matzoh
platter, piled it high with the bread of affliction, and returned it to the table, covered with a magenta velvet cloth.

“What we have here,” Sir Hyman said, “are not the tasteless, massproduced
matzohs
you might expect to find on the tables of tradesmen in Swiss Cottage or Golders Green, their eyes on the main chance. These are the authentic
matzohs
of ancient and time-honoured tradition. They are called
Matzoh Shemurah
. Guarded
matzoh
. Baked behind locked doors, under conditions of the strictest security, according to a recipe first formulated in Babylon. Brought from there to Lyons in the year 1142, of the Christian era, and from there to York. These were made for me by a venerable Polish rabbi I know in Whitechapel.”

“Come on, Hymie!”

“Let's get on with it.”

“I'm starved!”

Sir Hyman yanked the magenta cloth free, and revealed was a stack of the most unappetizing-looking biscuits. Coarse, unevenly baked, flecked with rust spots, their surfaces bumpy with big brown blisters.

“Everybody take one, please,” Sir Hyman said, “but, careful, they're hot.”

Once everybody had a
matzoh
in hand, Sir Hyman stood up and offered a solemn benediction. “Blessed be God, who brings food out of the earth. Blessed be God, who made each
mitzvah
bring us holiness, and laid on us the eating of
matzoh
.” Then he indicated that they were free to dig in at last.

The West End impresario, his eyes on the caviar, was the first to take a bite. Starchy, he thought. Bland. But then he felt a blister in the
matzoh
burst like a pustule and the next thing he knew a warm fluid was dribbling down his chin. He was about to wipe it away with his napkin when the actress, seated opposite him, took one look and let out a terrifying scream. “Oh, my poor Hugh,” she cried. “Hugh, just look at you!”