The Finkler Question (30 page)

'Not good,' he said.

'No,' she agreed, 'not good at all. And especially not good as we can expect pro-Zionists to pounce on this as evidence of Hamas's intrinsic extremism and intolerance. Whereas . . .'

Tamara Krausz breathed deeply. Finkler breathed with her.

'Whereas . . .' he said.

'Whereas the truth of it is that what is being enacted here is the direct consequence of the illegal occupation. You cannot isolate a people, cut them off from their natural connection to the country, degrade and starve them, and not expect extremism to follow.'

'You certainly cannot,' Leonie said.

'No,' Tamara said quickly, before Leonie could say anything else. 'Avital, with whom I discussed this, even went so far as to suggest it was a dark fulfilment of deliberate Israeli policy. Drive Gaza further and further into itself until the West would be begging Israel to reconquer it.'

'Sheesh,' Finkler said.

'I know,' she said, meeting his eyes.

'How is Avital?' he asked suddenly.

Tamara Krausz opened her face to him. Finkler felt he'd been handed a flower. 'He isn't well,' she said. 'Not that he'd admit it. He's tireless.'

'Yes, isn't he,' Finkler replied. 'And Navah?'

'Well, thank God. Well. She's his right hand.'

'Is she ever.' Finkler smiled, handing her a flower in return.

The knowledge that this moment of insider intimacy between them was driving the others crazy filled him with a quiet satisfaction. He could hear Kugle's heart shrivel.

Only poker gave him comparable pleasure.

3

Libor went to see the bereavement counsellor Emmy had recommended. A dark, towering woman big enough to dangle him on her knee. She could have been the ventriloquist, he her dummy.

'Jean Norman,' she said, extending an arm long enough to go around his back and work his levers.

Jean Norman. Such a plain name for such an exotic personage, he thought it must have been assumed to calm the bereaved. Real name Adelgonda Remedios Arancibia.

He did it as a favour to Emmy. For himself he wouldn't have bothered. What did he hope to be counselled into feeling? Cheerful about his prospects?

He felt bad that he had not been able to answer Emmy's appeal for support. Finkler was the most eminent public figure he knew now and Finkler was hardly going to speak out against the film director who understood why people wanted to kill Jews. For all Libor knew to the contrary the two were bosom friends.

So going to the bereavement counsellor was the second-best thing he could do for Emmy.

Jean Norman. Real name Adelaida Inessa Ulyana Miroshnichenkop.

She lived in Maida Vale, not all that far from where Treslove lived, though Treslove had called it Hampstead, or rather from where Treslove
had
lived before he moved in with Libor's great-great niece. He would have preferred it had she worked out of a clinic or a hospital, but she saw him in the front room of her house.

She was, she explained, retired. But still counselled . . .

Libor thought she was going to say for a hobby or to keep her hand in, but she left the sentence to dangle like a person on the end of a rope . . .

The house was large but the room she invited Libor into was diminutive, almost like a room in a doll's house. There were prints on the walls of rural scenes. Shepherds and shepherdesses. And a collection of porcelain thimbles on the mantelpiece. She was too tall for the room, Libor thought. She had to fold herself almost into three in order to fit into her chair. Her height made Libor feel foolish. Even with both of them sitting down he had to look up at her.

She had a fine Roman nose with open dark nostrils into which Libor had no choice but to stare. Despite her foreignness there was an air of the Women's Institute about her, that look of shy strait-laced provincial glamour which proved such a success when women of this sort took their clothes off for a charity calendar. She would have long pendulous breasts and a deep dark open Sicilian navel, Libor guessed.

He wondered if her ability to make him imagine her without clothes, though she was covered from her neck to her ankles and never made a movement that was remotely suggestive, was part of her bereavement counselling technique.

They talked briefly about Emmy. Emmy had told her who Libor was. She remembered his articles and even described one or two of them correctly. There were famous photographs. She remembered some of those too. Libor laughing with Garbo. Libor lying on a bed with Jane Russell, Libor looking the less masculine of the two. Libor dancing with Marilyn Monroe, cheek to cheek in an impossible parody of romance, given all the disparities.

'You should have seen me dance with my wife,' Libor said.

He said it as a favour to her, just as coming to see her was a favour to Emmy. He assumed this was his role. To do favours and be bereaved.

He was relieved she didn't say anything inane about the death of loved ones - he hated the expression loved ones; there weren't loved ones, there was only loved Malkie - or cycles of emotion or pathways for grief.

Nor, for which he was no less grateful, did she treat him to any sideways glances of compassion. She did not sorrow for him. She left him to sorrow for himself.

As the time wore on he found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on anything she was saying. Jean Norman. Real name Fruzsina Orsolya Fonnyaszto.

He continued to look up into her nostrils where it was soothingly dark and quiet.

As for what he said to her, he had no idea. He mouthed his feelings. He play-acted at grief. He spoke the words which he imagined the bereaved spoke at such a time. Even made the accompanying gestures. Had he stayed there long enough he believed he'd have begun to wring his hands and tear his hair.

His self-consciousness surprised and appalled him. What need was there for this? Why did he not simply speak his heart?

Because the heart did not speak, that was why. Because language presupposes artificiality. Because in the end there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to be said.

Did she know that, Jean Norman? Real name Maarit Tuulikki Jaaskelainen. Was it part of her professional knowledge that the bereaved sat in front of her, looked up into her nostrils and lied?

He should have howled like an animal. That at least would have been a genuine expression of how he felt. Except that it wasn't. There was no genuine expression of how he felt.

She had a question for him before he left. She became, in the asking of it, more animated than in the whole time he had been with her. Clearly this was the real, in fact the only, reason he was here. What she was about to ask him she had wanted to ask him from the moment he walked in the room. No, from the moment she knew he was coming to see her.

'About Marilyn,' she said.

'Marilyn Monroe? What about her?'

'You knew her well?'

'Yes.'

She blew out her cheeks and patted her chest. 'So tell me . . .'

'Yes?'

'Did she take her own life, or was she murdered?'

4

Treslove and Hephzibah are singing love duets in the bath.

Finkler is losing money at poker.

Libor is sinking fast.

Finkler is losing money at poker but his books are selling well and at least he hasn't made a pass at Tamara Krausz.

Libor is sinking fast because he has lost Malkie. Emmy has been ringing him with news of her grandson. He will not get his sight back. There has been another attack on two Jewish boys wearing fringes, Emmy also tells him. And headstones in a Jewish cemetery in north London have been defaced. Swastikas. What does she want him to do? Start a vigilante group? Mount a guard on every Jewish burial place in London?

Libor is at pains not to confuse his feelings about Jews being attacked again in public places with his feelings for Malkie.

Treslove and Hephzibah are singing 'O soave fanciulla', 'Parigi o cara', 'E il sol dell'anima', 'La ci darem la mano', and so on.

Whatever aria he knows she knows. How astonishing is that? he asks himself.

Everything they sing is either a hello or a goodbye. That's opera for you. Treslove sings them all as goodbyes. Hephzibah as hellos. So even when they differ they are complementary and he is the beneficiary.

Her voice is strong, more suited to Wagner. But they won't be singing any Wagner, not even
Tristan und Isolde
. 'My rule of thumb is that if there's an "und" anywhere I won't be singing it,' she tells him.

He's beginning to understand Finkler culture. It's like Libor and Marlene Dietrich, assuming Libor had told the truth about Marlene Dietrich. There are some things you don't do. Very well, Treslove won't do them either. Show him a German and he'll kick the living shit out of the
mamzer
.

Mamzer
is Yiddish for bastard. Treslove can't stop using the word.

Even of himself. Am I lucky
mamzer
or what am I? he asks.

In celebration of being such a lucky
mamzer
, Treslove invites Finkler and Libor to a dinner party. Come and toast my new life. He thought of asking his sons but changed his mind. He doesn't like his sons. He doesn't like Finkler either, come to that, but Finkler is an old friend. He chose him. He didn't choose his sons.

Finkler whistled through his teeth when he walked out of the lift straight on to Hephzibah's terrace.

'You've landed on your feet,' he whispered to Treslove.

Crude
mamzer
, Treslove thought. 'Have I?' he asked, tersely. 'I wasn't aware I'd been
off
my feet.'

Finkler dug his ribs. 'Come on! Teasing.'

'Is that what you're doing? Well, glad you like it here, anyway. You can watch the cricket.'

'Can I?' Finkler liked cricket. Liking cricket made him, he thought, English.

'I meant
one
can.
One
can watch cricket from here.'

He had no intention of inviting Finkler over to watch cricket. Finkler enjoyed enough advantages already. Let him buy a ticket. Failing which, let him sit on his own terrace and watch the Heath. There was lots to see on the Heath, as Treslove remembered. Not that he remembered much of Hampstead now. He had been in St John's Wood three months and couldn't recall ever having lived anywhere else. Or
with
anyone else.

Hephzibah occluded his past.

He took Finkler into the kitchen to meet Hephzibah who was brewing at the stove. He had been waiting for this moment a long time.

'Sam, d'Jew know Jewno?' he said.

Not a flicker of understanding or recollection from Finkler.

Treslove thought about spelling it out to jog his memory, though he believed it unlikely that Finkler ever forgot anything he himself had said. Finkler never went anywhere without a notebook in which he wrote down whatever he heard that interested him, mostly his own observations. 'Waste not, want not,' he once told Treslove, opening his notebook. Which Treslove took to mean that Finkler routinely recycled himself, knowing he could get a whole book out of a mumbled aside. So Treslove's money was on Finkler remembering his D'Jew know Jewno jest but not wanting to allow Treslove a jest in return.

But by now the two had already shaken hands anyway, Hephzibah wiping hers on her cook's apron.

'Sam.'

'Hephzibah.'

'My delight is in you,' Finkler said.

Hephzibah inclined her head graciously.

Treslove's face was a question mark.

'That's what Hephzibah means in Hebrew,' Finkler told him. 'My delight is in you.'