The Enemy of the Good (24 page)

‘Is that true?’

‘Of course, or I wouldn’t have said it.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘But that’s the population of a small country.’

‘I know. I spoilt it all when I proposed that we should found one. Twinsylvania.’

He fell silent, and she took advantage of the lull to think of Mark. For all her awe of Clement’s artistic talent and respect for Shoana’s executive skill, she remained proudest of Mark’s social conscience. She hesitated to admit it, even to herself, but, with his adolescent schemes for changing the world and adult schemes for feeding it, he had been the child closest to her heart. Life would have been very different had he survived. First and foremost, she would have had grandchildren. It was one of the bitterest ironies of growing old that
intellectual
triumphs paled beside family ties. Nothing made her feel more
inadequate
than hearing her friends talk about babysitting. She had even caught herself gazing jealously at photographs of bone-weary Africans caring for grandchildren orphaned by aids. So intense was her longing that she barely stopped to wonder if the children themselves were healthy. She was brought back to reality by the sight of her own infected son.

‘There’s one photograph I don’t need to spur my memory,’ she said, moving across to his chair and taking his hand. ‘I see his face every time I look at yours.’

‘What as? An aide-memoire or a memento mori?’ Clement asked.

‘I didn’t mean – ’

‘Not to worry, Ma, I’m glad to be good for something. What hurts most is not having felt that psychic tremor when he died – that sense of someone walking over my grave times a thousand – which a surviving twin’s supposed to feel. I was probably drinking or drugging or sleeping around.’

‘Or working,’ she countered, refusing to collude in his self-disgust.

‘But the sense of loss – as sharp as an amputated limb – I felt that all right. I still do. The better part of myself cut off.’

‘You’re your own best self.’

‘You don’t understand! Think of the closeness you feel towards Susannah or me and square it. We were part of each other from the start. Not just the same womb but the same egg!’

Reluctant to risk a reply, she broke away and drifted around the room. As she gazed out of the window, she felt a pressing need for fresh air. With Clement unwilling to accompany her to the park, she suggested a stroll in the garden. She strove to curb her impatience as he searched for his sunglasses, which the gathering clouds were rapidly making redundant, and threw a jacket over his sweater. By the time he was finally ready, the sky was leaden and there was a distinct nip in the air, nevertheless she was determined not to shiver and so give him an excuse to turn back.

The moment she stepped through the door, she saw the reason for his
procrastination
. Instead of the usual elegant vista, she was facing a wilderness:  the patio unswept and the paths mossy; bindweed choking the pergola and a rambling rose buckling the fence; a few hardy perennials trapped in a tangle of dead heads and withered stalks. Only the lawn showed any sign of recent care.

‘That’s Mike’s domain,’ he said, as she challenged him. ‘I’m in charge of the bed department.’

‘Then I suggest you wake up to your responsibilities,’ she said, ignoring the innuendo. ‘This is a disgrace.’

‘I don’t have the energy. No, it’s nothing to do with the virus,’ he said quickly, as if his physical health were her only cause for concern. ‘I used to love coming out here in the evenings. The perfect way to wind down after a day in the studio. Now I’ve stopped painting, there’s no point.’

‘There’s a simple answer to that.’

‘I’m afraid there’s more at stake than a few flowers.’

‘Such as?’

‘Roxborough really changed things for me. Not just what happened to Pa. Though you said yourself he hasn’t been the same since.’

‘Your father’s eighty-three. He wouldn’t have been the same anyway.’

‘But stirring up all that hatred.’

‘Blinkered, twisted people. The hatred’s in them. You simply brought it to light.’

‘Perhaps. But I can’t fight it any more.’

‘Then the forces of darkness will win. Don’t you remember evil triumphing when good men do nothing? You’re a good man, Clement.’

‘Your faith in human nature is admirable. It’s almost enough to restore my own.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

‘I said
almost
.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘It’s still more extraordinary given everything you were called on to witness.’

‘Don’t forget that even then there were flickers of hope. I saw people who risked their lives to protect their families, their friends, and sometimes even total strangers. You may think it was a futile gesture, pitting a weak human body against batons and bullets and jackboots. But it wasn’t. Quite the reverse. Because in the memory of the survivors – and I’m one of them – not to mention the world memory, that sacrifice remains. Not a Jewish sacrifice to honour God or a Christian sacrifice to redeem man, but a simple sacrifice to the ideal of humanity.’

‘What about a Muslim sacrifice?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know enough about them to comment.’

‘I do. At least about one of them. Rafik, my model.’

‘Your Christ?’

‘I can’t get any news of him. The British authorities bundled him on a plane home and now they’ve washed their hands of him – a phrase which is horribly apt under the circumstances. I’ve rung the Embassy in Algiers. I asked them to make inquiries. I explained he was in fear of his life. But no joy! He’s a success story, a repatriated asylum seeker. What happens next is none of their concern.’

‘Then you must confront them through your painting. When you’re blessed with a talent like yours, it’s a crime to waste it.’

‘You’re not consistent, Ma. In
The Eden People
, you described how the Hadza have no art. Your ideal society has no use for Bellini and Caravaggio or Shakespeare and Bach, let alone Granville! Who knows? Maybe discord and dissatisfaction came into the world with the cave painters: the primal
egotists
. Suddenly, there was a new breed of people eager not to do but to
document
, whether it was the hunt or fertility dances or, as we’re now told, erotic fantasies. Yes, that would be fitting, wouldn’t it: if I’m the heir to ancient pornographers?’

‘True, the Hadza don’t need art,’ Marta said, brushing aside the
hyperbole
, ‘but for those of us exiled from Eden there’s no greater source of enlightenment.’

‘I used to think so. Pa once said that human beings were uniquely poised between Whipsnade Zoo and Chartres Cathedral, but that what tipped the balance towards Chartres was art. Then Mike, who favours the zoo, told me about penguins who not only search for precious stones to decorate their nests but choose their mates on the basis of the decoration. At a stroke, he destroyed any notion of art as a divine spark and equated it with prostitution.’

‘I can’t speak for penguins,’ Marta said, keen to lighten the mood, ‘but, with humans, we’re talking imagination not greed.’

‘After much deliberation, I’ve concluded that the whole point of art – the reason governments don’t just tolerate but sponsor it – is to give people like you and me, the educated but powerless, the fantasy of control. We read books to gain a privileged insight into other peoples’ minds; we sit in theatres to watch their lives played out in front of us; we go to exhibitions so that, even though we can’t influence the bigger picture, we can weigh up smaller ones.’ She flinched as he kicked a pebble into a flower bed. ‘You, of all people, should appreciate Auden’s despair at the failure of his poetry to save a single Jew from the gas chambers.’

‘Like so much despair, it strikes me as self-indulgent,’ she said pointedly. ‘How can we be sure that there wouldn’t have been more Nazis without his poetry? Come to that, do you know how much of it was even translated?’

‘I’d go a step further and say that artists actively assisted the Nazi
programme
. I don’t just mean the Riefenstahls and Furtwänglers and Strausses with their compromised loyalties, but the Mozarts and Beethovens.
Listening
to the concentration camp orchestras at night gave the guards the peace of mind with which to murder more inmates the next day. They applauded the music while treating the players as lower than the sheep who supplied the strings for the violins.’

‘Have you considered that the music might have brought peace of mind to the players as well? To know that, even if they died, it would live on. Art is the part of us that will survive.’

‘Art is an illusion, Ma. And the most absurd illusion of all is the illusion of permanence. When the microbes inherit the earth, do you suppose they’ll be experts on Titian?’

Weighed down by his misery, Marta sank on to a nearby bench where she soaked up the residual warmth of the cushion. Clement stood beside her, fighting a losing battle with a fly.

‘I can’t bear to see you like this,’ she said. ‘Are you doing nothing useful with your life?’

‘One evening a week, I volunteer on an immigration helpline, but it’s hardly taxing. If only I were more New Agey, I could pretend I was working on myself.’

‘And everything’s fine with Mike?’

‘Oh Ma, even after all these years, you locate every problem in the bedroom!’

‘Thank you, Clement!’ To her surprise, she felt herself blushing.

‘To answer your question: no, it’s not. He’s such a dynamo. He thinks
lassitude
is a class thing I inherited along with the house.’

‘Depression can damage the immune system.’

‘Really? Is that so? Perhaps we can play a game to help me snap out of it?’

‘There’s no call to be sarcastic, darling. I’m only thinking of you.’

‘I’m sorry. It’s just that things haven’t been easy.’

‘I’ve been reading up on the literature. They say that
HIV
and
AIDS
are now no different from diabetes. You can lead a perfectly normal life.’

‘Do you remember Oliver?’

‘Oliver who?’

‘Oliver, my ex.’

‘Yes, of course.’ It had been so long since he mentioned him that she had supposed him to be as taboo as Shoana’s Chris.

‘Although, actually, it’s Newsom. He’s changed his name.’

‘What for?’

‘I don’t know. Ask Shoana! I think he needed a new vibration or
something
. He has
AIDS
. We’ve been in touch again this past year.’

‘Isn’t that hard for Mike?’

‘On the contrary, he considers it a part of my communal responsibility. Newsom has anal cancer and a blood clot on his lungs that won’t respond to treatment. Meanwhile, friends who’ve been on the drugs for years are suffering heart attacks and strokes. So it’s not quite diabetes… not yet.’

‘But you told me you were fine,’ she said, panicking at the prospect of further revelations.

‘Oh yes, the clinic’s blue-eyed boy. At least for now. But seeing Newsom so sick has set me thinking. If I should reach a stage where I become more of an illness than a person, then I don’t want to linger on.’

‘You may change your mind when the time comes… which I’m sure it won’t.’ She clasped his hand.

‘Perhaps. But for the moment I’m not in any doubt. When my own quality of life is destroyed and what’s more I’m destroying the people around me, I want to make a dignified exit.’

‘What about your faith? How can you take the life God has given you?’

‘It’s precisely because of my faith that I don’t have a problem. I’ve always thought suicide must be harder for an atheist. I believe God gave me free will, which is to be exercised even
in extremis
. Besides, unlike the priests who hold that I’ll rot in Hell for the sin of despair or Carla with her fear of being reborn as a hungry ghost, I know I’ll be welcomed into the hereafter.’ His face lit up and, for the first time during her visit, she saw traces of the old Clement. ‘I’ve talked it over with Mike. He said that, if the crunch comes, he’d be willing to help me.’ She was not surprised that their relationship was under strain if that were the gist of their pillow talk. ‘But, if for some reason he wasn’t around, would you do it?’

‘There’s nothing worse than outliving your children. I’ve been through it once, Clement. I couldn’t bear to go through it again.’

‘You told me you loved me more than life. I know you meant your own life, but what about mine? That’s the 64,000-dollar question. Could you love me more than my life, Ma?’

‘It’s turned chilly. I’m not wearing as many layers as you. I’m going back indoors.’

Reeling from her encounter with Clement, Marta returned to the hotel to find that Edwin had spent the whole day in bed. He refused to recall the doctor, insisting that he had just been catching up on sleep and his headache had all but disappeared. He was so anxious not to upset Shoana that she agreed to go to the party alone, in return for a promise that, come what may, they would leave for home in the morning. To cheer herself up and challenge the company, she decided to wear her new red and white polka-dot dress, thrilling to both the coolness of the close-fitting silk and the defiance of her naked arms. She kissed Edwin’s forehead as gently as if he were a child,
assuring
him that she would not be late, and, with a sigh at his innocent ‘Enjoy yourself!’, made her way down to the lobby, where the doorman hailed a cab to take her to Hendon. She settled back in the lumpy seat, shutting her eyes in anticipation of a wearying evening, only to wake up with a start half an hour later as they rattled through the drably uniform streets of north London.

The Rabbi’s door was opened by a surly teenager whose pallid face betrayed a mixture of bad diet, stale rooms and excessive study. He shifted uneasily while she spoke, twiddling the tassels on his shirt and gazing at his feet, as though listening to a chorus of ‘thou shalt nots’ in his head. Leaving her standing in the hall, he went in search of his mother. She shot an idle glance at the portraits plastered over the wall, torn between envy and dismay at renewing her acquaintance with the Rabbi’s seventeen children and
fifty-four
grandchildren, assembled as for a touring production of
Fiddler on the Roof
. This was a world in which the family reigned supreme and yet, as though conscious of its own deficiencies, it had expanded to the population of a small town.

Spurred on by the sounds of revelry elsewhere in the house, she ventured through the nearest doorway and was instantly confronted with her error. Conversation stopped dead as the roomful of black-clad men stared at her with a hostility she had last met when she led a protest of desperate women into the Oxford Playhouse Gents. The memory bolstered her and she turned to her neighbour with a request for a drink. He mumbled into his beard, casting a panic-stricken look at Zvi who, moving close – but not too close – to his maverick mother-in-law, explained that the women were gathered in the dining room. ‘Where else?’ she said with a smile and excused herself, at which the talk started up as abruptly as if they had pressed
Resume
. She made her way to the dining room where Rivka greeted her warmly, berating her son for his failure to tell her that she had arrived.

‘Boys!’ she said in mock despair.

‘I know. I had two myself,’ Marta replied, before remembering Rivka’s ten. She moved to Shoana who was deep in discussion with Etta and Rachel. Kissing her daughter, she was aware of a change in her, which she initially attributed to an evening-after glow, only to realise that she was wearing a wig. Although the auburn bob had been carefully matched to her own hair, the difference in texture was plain to the practised eye. She was appalled by the thought that Shoana had spent the first day of married life having her hair shorn and longed for reassurance about the wedding night itself. So, with an apology to Etta and Rachel, she drew her daughter aside.

‘Well then, how does it feel to be Mrs Latsky?’ she asked lightly.

‘Bliss. Pure, indescribable bliss. What more can I say? It’s like we’ve been married for years… but in a special way, not predictable. Does that sound odd?’

‘Not at all,’ Marta replied, striving for conviction. ‘And last night…?’

‘Admit it, Ma,’ Shoana said with a grin. ‘That’s all you really wanted to know. Don’t worry! It was perfect. Everything you said about waiting too long and expecting too much… forget it! Your daughter has struck gold.’

As Shoana returned to her guests, Marta made her way to the buffet. The food – herring, gefilte fish, pickled cucumber and cheesecake – took her back seventy years to the warmth of her grandmother’s kitchen and the traditional dishes that her mother refused to cook. For the first time her hopes of a
grandchild
were focused on a girl, who would enable her to honour the memory of her own
Bubbe
. Then, wondering whether those hopes might at last be
fulfilled
, she cast a furtive glance at Shoana’s stomach.

At a signal from her son, Rivka collected Shoana, Etta and Marta and led them across the hall. Marta’s longing to break down barriers was thwarted again when, instead of entering the study, they sat on four chairs strategically ranged outside the door. Zvi stood next to them, while remaining firmly in the sanctum, and spoke a Hebrew blessing over a cup of wine.

Marta used the opportunity to assess her new son-in-law. His resonant voice and powerful presence were undeniably attractive, but his earnestness and insularity were hard to bear. Although he did business around the globe, she had yet to hear of his showing an interest in anything beyond his own backyard. She was roused from her reflections by a burst of clapping as Zvi drank from the cup and handed it to Shoana, who followed suit to further applause. Zvi then hurried back into the room, leaving the women stranded. With Rivka announcing that she had to check on the food and Shoana that she should go back to her friends, Marta turned to Etta, with whom she felt a rapport that was independent of their children.

‘I feel as if I’ve travelled back in time,’ she said.

‘You have. We both have,’ Etta replied. ‘I find it very… what’s the word?… disconcerting. Zvi would say that it was the war that made me join the kibbutz: that I wished to live in a world where religion was not of importance, a
socialist
state that has been given the name Israel.’

‘Was he right?’

‘In parts. But my loss of religion was much bigger than what I saw in the camp.’

‘Which one were you in?’ Marta asked gently.

‘Mauthausen.’

Marta trembled as the bond was reinforced. She was struck by the
possibility
that Etta had known her mother, that they had shared the same hut, even the same bunk, crammed in so tightly that they were forced to turn together when the night guards prodded them with their sticks. Suddenly, the remote chance became a certainty, and she yearned to know whether the bunk-mate had ever mentioned a daughter of about Etta’s age. But it was too great a burden to place on a new acquaintance. Besides, Etta had a story of her own which she began to relate.

‘Both my parents were gassed, then burnt in the crematorium from the camp. One day I was walking in the yard with my little sister when an old woman out of another hut came to us. If this was a fairy tale, she would be a witch… but she was not a witch; she was far too much broken. I clasped on to Sara’s hand so tightly. “See that smoke,” this old woman said, “it’s your mother and father.” Her words made no sense in my mind. I remember
thinking
: I am just a child; I cannot be understanding this well. But she went on. “They’re dead. It’s their bodies. They’re burning them.” Then she laughed like in pain and disappeared. Although not in smoke. This came later.’ Marta felt the fumes from the chimneys misting her eyes. ‘I’m sorry. You’re sad. I should not have spoken of it.’

‘No, don’t worry. It’s nothing you said. I have memories of my own.’ Etta’s confession spurred her to speak. ‘My mother and sister were also in
Mauthausen
. You might have known…’

‘Maybe I have. But the years… so many names… this old head. But we must not be sad, no? We are having a party! I once heard my cousin in Haifa
speaking
to another survivor. They did not cry or make complaints about what has happened. On the contrary, they made jokes about it. Bad jokes… terrible jokes. “What was your hotel like then?” my cousin asked. “Far too crowded,” her friend said, “they let everyone in.” “And the food?” “No taste, no taste at all. Although they had their own special dishes: grey water; green water.” I was angry. All the many dead people and they were laughing at them. Now I understand what they were doing. More, I am full of… what do you say when you do this?’ Etta clapped her hands.

‘Applause?’

‘That is right. I am full of applause for it.’

Conversation was interrupted by Chanan, who had escaped to use the
lavatory
. ‘I have smiled and I have nodded and I have raised my shoulders like this, yes, when people talk to me about things that I do not understand and I do not care. I need you, Etta. I need you to tell me again who I am.’

‘And I need some air,’ Marta said. ‘Do you think anyone would notice if we sneaked outside?’

‘Good idea,’ Chanan said. ‘Fresh air! Oh yes, this is a blessing.’

The three crept through the kitchen and into the garden like truanting children. Their delight in their daring faded in the face of overgrown grass, overrun borders and a ramshackle shed, the only splash of colour coming from a red plastic car seat upended on the wasteland of the lawn. Marta recoiled from a contempt for nature that made Clement’s unweeded flower beds look positively Edenic.

‘With all those children,’ she said, ‘you’d have thought one of them could have handled a mower.’

‘I think how my father would have hated this,’ Chanan said. ‘It was because of this reason he left Poland.’ Marta pictured a street of slovenly neighbours. ‘He had the feeling we had become like jokes of ourselves… you understand?’ Marta nodded. ‘Everything was narrow. The world we lived in was narrow; the thoughts in our heads were narrow; the jobs we were given were narrow. Even the streets of our houses were narrow!’

‘Chanan’s father was one of the founding men of our kibbutz,’ Etta said, as proudly as if he had sailed on the
Mayflower
. ‘Chanan was the first of our childrens to be born there.’

‘I grew up living in a dream. Zvi, my son, accuses us with throwing away God. If this is a crime, then yes, I am guilty. But we did it for a reason – ’

‘We did it because we have reason,’ Etta said.

‘And because we had trust that children who were born with no God would give all their good faith to man.’

‘We believed we were bringing the path not just for the Jews but for the whole human beings,’ Etta said, effortlessly picking up Chanan’s theme. ‘In time – maybe not so soon but in time – all peoples, all countries would be like the kibbutz. Women would not take rules from their husbands. Childrens would not take rules from their fathers. We would not judge who we were by what we could buy… But we were wrong.’

‘Say rather “We were not yet right”,’ Chanan said.

‘We were wrong,’ Etta insisted. ‘We are living in a world with the spirit of a fitted kitchen. And my son, he is not happy with this. Good! But what does he do? He does not look forward, no. He does not try to change how things are working. Instead, he runs back into the Middle Ages.’

Etta’s pain was so raw that Marta feared she would burst into tears. As Chanan took her in his arms and rubbed the small of her back, Marta had the disturbing sensation of seeing her parents. Dismissing it as sentimentality, she hurried to resume the conversation.

‘It isn’t the Lubavitch faith I find so hard to take but their certainty. I’ve lived among people of faith most of my married life. But they were people who dared to doubt… who declared that doubt made their faith stronger. Not in Edwin’s case, it’s true…’

‘Where is the Bishop?’ Chanan asked. ‘We have not seen him this whole evening.’

‘No, he’s resting at the hotel. Yesterday was quite a strain for him. He’s not a young man.’

‘We are none of us young,’ Chanan said. ‘Of course I make exceptions for you.’

‘You flatter me,’ Marta replied, raising her eyebrows.

‘And your dress,’ Etta said. ‘May I?’

‘Of course.’

‘It’s so delicate,’ Etta said, fingering the cloth.

‘Mousseline,’ Marta said. ‘I’m afraid that some of our fellow guests have me marked down as a scarlet woman, but I felt an intense desire to assert myself. Besides it’s cool.’ As if on cue, Chanan took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. ‘But, to return to Edwin: I hope I didn’t make him sound glib. For years he struggled to reconcile his faith with the anomalies plain to a man of his intelligence and integrity. I blamed myself. It couldn’t have been easy singing
All things bright and beautiful
alongside a wife whose family perished in the camps.’

‘He must have loved you very much,’ Etta said.

‘Too much, I used to think. But not now. Over the years we’ve grown closer. It’s as though our minds have caught up with the rest of us. When I said Edwin had lost his faith, that was only half-true. He lost his faith in God, but not in humanity. And my own remains as strong as when my parents taught me how people –
the people
– would change the world. Of course my critics… my detractors regard it as perverse. They maintain that my sole concern in going to Africa, in “latching on to the Hadza”, in their phrase, has been to prove that what happened to me – what happened to us all – under the Nazis was an aberration and so put it behind me. To this end, I picked on a society as remote as possible from the modern world and claimed that they were alone in living authentically. Patronising drivel! Besides, why should I fabricate the evidence when it’s everywhere to see? And nowhere more compelling than in Germany itself. It’s been called a
miracle
that a country which had been devastated – and not just physically – was rebuilt so soon after the War. But, to my mind, it shows that, however far fascism may have spread, it didn’t run deep. The fundamental decency of human nature survived and took the first opportunity to reassert itself.’

‘I wish you would have spoken up at the town meetings,’ Chanan said. ‘Especially when the troubles came. In one minute you would have made ten people change their minds.’

‘But for how long would it last?’ Etta asked. ‘Oh, I do not question your thoughts, Marta. I know how important they are. I too have read
The Eden Peoples
when it is first published.’