The Finkler Question (52 page)

It was noise that must have woken him. A crowd of schoolchildren of all colours and sexes was shouting something he couldn’t quite hear, but it wasn’t a jumbled shout, it was the repetition of a phrase, the repetition itself being a sort of taunt. But who they were taunting he couldn’t see either.

Nothing to do with him, and although he knew an adult no longer dared disperse a crowd of schoolchildren, no matter how great their mischief, because the chances were that at least one of them would be armed with a machete, he left the bench as though on business of his own – little as he knew of having business of his own – and tried to get a little closer to them.

Big mistake, he thought, even as he was making it.

2

In the middle of the circle of schoolchildren was a youth of about fifteen in a black suit, lanky, rather pretty in a Spanish and Portuguese way, with blue-black sidelocks, fringes spilling from his shirt, a boy’s fedora on his head – no, not a boy’s fedora, for there was nothing boyish about him, but a small man’s fedora. That’s what he was – a small Sephardic Jew. A holy man in all but age.

Revulsion swept through Treslove.

As, presumably, it had swept through the children. The phrase they were taunting him with was, ‘It’s a Jew!’

‘It’s a Jew!’ they cried. ‘It’s a Jew!’

As though they had made a discovery. Look what’s turned up, look what we’ve found, out of its natural habitat.

It
.

The schoolchildren didn’t look capable of a lynching. Not from the best of schools, Treslove calculated, but not from the worst of schools either. The boys didn’t appear to be armed. The girls were not foul-mouthed. There was a limit to the menace. They wouldn’t kill the boy. They would just prod him the way you might prod something foreign washed up on a beach. ‘It’s a Jew!’

The holy man in all but age – the holy boy – was distressed but not terrified. He, too, seemed to know they would not kill him. But this could not be allowed to continue, whatever he thought. Unsure how to proceed, Treslove looked around. A woman his age, walking a dog, caught his eye. This cannot be allowed to continue, her look said. Treslove nodded.

‘Hey, what’s going on?’ the woman with the dog shouted.

‘Hey!’ Treslove shouted.

The schoolchildren weighed up the situation. Maybe it was the woman’s dog that decided them. Maybe they just wanted to be shown a way out of this themselves.

‘We’re just messing about,’ one of them said.

‘Shoo!’ the woman said, bringing her dog forward. It was only a terrier, with a bemused upper-class Bertie Wooster expression, but a dog’s a dog.

‘Shoo yourself,’ one of the girls told her.

‘Cunt!’ shouted a boy, backing off.

‘Hey!’ Treslove shouted.

‘We were only being friendly,’ another girl said. She made it sound as though these two busybodies had gone and lost the Jew a whole new bunch of chums.

They broke up and withdrew, not all at once but a bit at a time, like the tide receding from the outlandish thing it had washed up. Left alone, the outlandish thing went on its way. He didn’t thank the woman or Treslove or even the woman’s dog. Probably against his religion, Treslove thought. But for a fleeting second Treslove caught his beautiful coal-black eye. The boy was not angry. Treslove wasn’t even sure he’d been afraid. What Treslove saw in his face was accustomedness.

‘You OK?’ Treslove asked.

The boy shrugged. It was almost an insolent gesture. This is simply the way of it, the shrug said. Don’t make a fuss. With maybe a touch of proud, God-protected, stand-offishness in it. He finds me an unclean thing, Treslove thought.

Treslove rolled his eyes at the woman. She did the same to him. Go figure these kids.

Treslove returned to the bench on which he’d been dozing earlier. He was, he discovered, shaking.

He couldn’t get the phrase out of his head.
It’s a Jew!

But he was battling other phrases of his own
. Then why dress like that? Then why present yourself to them? And why couldn’t you thank us? And why did you look at me as though to you I too am an ‘it’?

One of the girls had not run off with the others. She lingered, looking about her. Treslove had the dread thought that she was going to try to pick him up. Maybe offer him services for pocket money. He must have looked an easy touch, sitting on the bench, shaking

She bent down, not looking at him, to take off her shoes. It was at that moment that he recognised her. She was the schoolgirl in his once recurring dream – once recurring before Hephzibah, that is – the schoolgirl who paused in her running to take off the shoes that impeded her – whether vulnerable or resolute in her pleated skirt, white blouse, blue jumper and artfully twisted tie, he had never been able to decide. The schoolgirl in a hurry of which he hadn’t ever known if he would like to be the object.

‘Why are you taking off your shoes?’ he asked.

She surveyed him as though it would have been obvious to anyone but a moron why she was taking off her shoes: in order to scrape him off the bottoms.

‘Freak!’ she said, contorting her face at him, and then running off through the grass.

It’s a freak.

Nothing personal, then.
It’s a freak, it’s a Jew.
Just whoever wasn’t them.

Not worth anybody dying for.

Or was the opposite the truth: Not worth anybody living for?

3

It was early evening by the time he got back to the apartment. He’d needed a drink.

It was a good job that no fragile shiksa with a watery Ophelia expression had come into the bar in which he drank. He might have taken her back into the park and drowned them both.

The apartment was oddly quiet. No Hephzibah. He went looking for her. No Hephzibah in the kitchen, no Hephzibah sprawled out in the living room watching television and wondering where he’d been, no Hephzibah in the bedroom in an oriental housecoat and with a rose between her teeth, no Hephzibah in the bathroom. But he could smell her perfume. One of her wardrobe doors was open and there were shoes scattered on the floor. She had gone out.

Then, as though a stone had been thrown at his temples, he remembered. It was the museum night. The launch. The Grand Opening, as Hephzibah had refused to call it. Jesus Christ! They were meant to be there at five thirty, the doors opening for guests at six fifteen. Early had been Hephzibah’s instruction. Early and brief. Get in, get out, attracting as little attention as possible. Even the invitations had been insignificant and posted late. Normally, as Treslove had observed to Hephzibah, Jews loved invitations. They were totemic, invariably embossed in gold Gothic lettering on thick slabs of card, over-enthusiastic in expression and sent out months in advance. Come to a party! Start thinking about a present! Start planning your wardrobe! Start losing weight! Hephzibah made sure her invitation was small and flimsy and crept into the world.

He had not promised her he would not be late. There was no need. He was never late. Most of the time he didn’t leave the apartment. And he did not forget arrangements.

So why
was
he late, and why
had
he forgotten this arrangement?

He knew what Hephzibah would say. She would say he forgot because he wanted to forget. Not for her to reason why. Because he had fallen out of love with her, perhaps. Because he was irrationally jealous of his friend. Because he had begun to oppose the museum in his heart.

She had not left him a note. That, to Treslove, suggested a very high degree of anger and hurt. He had cut her out without a word; she would do the same.

He wondered if it was all over between them. Libor’s doing, if so. There are some events which make it impossible to go back to where you were. After Libor, who had brought them together, nothing. Not impossibly, that was his intention. Those whom I have joined together I will put asunder. Treslove sympathised with Libor’s reasoning. Libor had discovered him to be a sneak and a fornicator and a braggart. He had fouled Finkler’s nest and would foul Libor’s via Hephzibah. What did he want with them, this cuckoo goy? Sucking at their tragedy because his own life was a farce. Go home, Julian. Go back to where you came from. Leave us in peace.

He sat on the edge of his bed, his head banging, agreeing with that judgement. His life
had
been a farce. Every element of it ludicrous. And yes, it was true, he had tried to nose his way into other people’s tragedy and grandeur since he couldn’t lay hands on any of his own. He had meant no harm or disrespect by it, quite the contrary; but it was theft all right.

‘It’s a Jew!’ the schoolchildren had laughed, and Treslove had taken the taunt personally. It had been as a spear in his own side. But what, beyond the obligation as an adult to clip every one of the little
mamzers
round the ear, did any of it have to do with him? Why had he staggered from his park bench like a wounded beast, and gone looking for alcohol? To take away the pain of what?

Time for another goodbye, then. Why not? Goodbyes were what he had always been good at. What was one more?

He watched his life go in a variety of directions. It was like being drunk. Being drunk was like being drunk. Maybe he would lurch out of the door and never be seen again. Maybe he would pack a case and go back to his Hampstead flat which was not in Hampstead. Maybe he would throw on some clothes and dash over to the museum. ‘Sorry, darling, am I in time for a last kosher canapé?’

One of those illusory fits of exhilaration to which purposeless men are susceptible seized him. The world was all before him, where to choose his place of rest. Lurching out of the door and vanishing was favourite. There was honour in it as well as wildness. Gifting Hephzibah his absence and gifting himself his liberty. Let’s go, he thought. Let’s be on our way. He would have punched the air had he been a man who punched the air.

But the sight of Hephzibah’s shoes in a tangle touched him. He loved the woman. She had synced him up with the universe. She might not ever forgive him for what he’d done but he owed her, owed himself, owed them both, a second chance. He showered quickly, put on a black suit, and ran out.

The darkness shocked him. He checked his watch. Eight forty-five! How had that happened? It was just after seven when he got back from the park. Where had the time gone? Was it possible he had passed out on the bed, between imagining making a run for it, and remembering how much he loved her through her shoes? He must have. There was no other explanation. He had fallen asleep for the second time that day and not known it. He was not in charge of himself. Things happened to him. He was not the agent of his own life. He wasn’t even living his own life.

It was only a ten-minute walk but it was fraught with dangers. The lamp posts were rearing up at him again. He imagined colliding with trees and pillar boxes. There was too much traffic on the road, all going too fast. Buses laboured up the incline. Behind them cars pulled out on nothing other than a hunch that it was safe for them to do so. Every bone in his body ached in anticipation of the impact.

He tried not to read the Arab graffiti on the walls of the Beatles’ old recording studio.

It was about nine when he arrived at the museum. The lights were on in the building and a small number of people – perhaps a dozen – were congregated outside. Congregated was not, perhaps, the word. Congregation suggests intention and he wasn’t sure there was any reason for these people to be there. He had half expected to see banners.
Death to Jewzs
. Cartoons of glutton-Yids devouring babies and Stars of David metamorphosing into swastikas. Such images were no longer even shocking. You could find them inside, or even on the covers of the most reputable publications. The streets had been full these last few weeks with stray demonstrators from Trafalgar Square and the Israeli Embassy, the human shrapnel of a deafening barrage of outrage, and Treslove would not have been surprised to see them here, hoping to get the attention of one or other of Hephzibah’s important Jewish guests, an ambassador, an MP, a pillar of the community.
Stop the massacre. Condemn the carnage. Kill the Jewzs.
But everything appeared quiet and orderly. There wasn’t even, as far as he could see, an ASHamed Jew come out to protest his hang-dog dissolidarity with his own people.