Charles Snow - The Sleep of Reason

“By and large, this has been a dreadful century,” Davidson was saying. “But in some ways we have become a bit more civilised.”

He seemed satisfied, either by the reflection or because he had not been too tired by the effort to talk. “Do you know,” he said to his daughter, “I think I’m going to allow myself a drink?”

On the way home, Margaret, just because his spirits had lifted (she had begun to feel justified in not giving way to him that summer) looked youthful and gay: youthful, gay, maternal, as though she had just heard that Maurice had passed an examination.

We kept another social engagement that week, this time at one of Azik Schiff’s theatre parties. As the party joggled for position in front of the Aldwych, the lights were washing on to the streaming pavement, but an attendant, hired by Schiff, was waiting with an umbrella, another attendant, hired by Schiff, was waiting in the foyer to lead us to our place. Our place, to begin with, was a private room which led out of the near-stage box. Waiters were carrying trays loaded with glasses of champagne. On the table were laid out mounds of pâté de foie gras. In the middle of it all stood Schiff, looking like an enormous, good-natured and extremely clever frog. By his side stood his wife Rosalind, looking like a lady of Napoleon’s Empire. Her hair was knotted above her head, her mouth was sly, her eyes full. She was wearing an Empire dress, for which, in her fifties, she didn’t have the bosom. On each of her wrists, thin and freckled, glittered two bracelets, emerald and diamond, ruby and diamond, sapphire and diamond, and (as a modest concession) aquamarine. Jewellery apart, skin-roughening apart, she had not changed much since I first met her. For she was an old acquaintance: she had been Roy Calvert’s wife. But, although immediately after Roy’s death I had written to her for a time, it was not on her initiative that, a few years before this theatre party, we had met again. It was on her second husband’s.

No doubt Azik thought that, in some remote fashion, I might be useful. I didn’t mind that. He had the knack, or the force of nature, to think one might be useful and still have plenty of affection to spare for one on the side. I had a lot of respect for him. He had had a remarkable, and to me in some ways an inexplicable life. In the thirties, when Roy Calvert had been working in the Berlin oriental libraries, Azik also had been in Berlin, a young student, ejected from the university under the Hitler laws. He had escaped to England with a few pounds. Somehow he had completed an English degree, very well. Somehow, when the war came, he escaped internment and fought in the British army, also very well. He finished the war in possession of several decorations, a first class honours degree, and what he had saved out of his pay. He was thirty-three. He then turned his attention to trade, or what seemed to be a complex kind of international barter. Eighteen years later, by the time of this party, he had made a fortune. How large, I wasn’t sure, but certainly larger than the fortunes of Charles March’s family or the other rich Jewish families who had befriended me when I was young.

It seemed like a conjuring trick, out of the power of the rest of us, or like an adventure of Vautrin’s. I once told him that if our positions had been reversed, and I had had to become a refugee in Berlin, I should — if I had been lucky — have kept myself alive by giving English lessons, and I should have gone on giving English lessons till I died. Azik gave an avuncular smile. Obviously he thought rather the same himself.

He was not in the least like my old March friends. They had become indistinguishable, by my generation, from rich upper middle-class gentile families, rather grander Forsytes. Azik was not indistinguishable. To begin with, he went to synagogue, whether he believed or not. He was a devoted Zionist. He would not have considered anglicising his first name. Unlike the Marches, who, in common with their gentile equivalents, had taken to concealing their money, Azik enjoyed displaying his. Why not? He was an abundant man. No one could be less puritanical. So long as he could leave young David — Rosalind, late in life, had given him a son, by this time ten years old — well off, he liked splashing money about as much as making it. Anyway, he created his own rules: he wasn’t made to be genteel: sometimes I thought, when people called him vulgar, that in following his nature he showed better taste than they. As another oddity, he was politically both sophisticated and detached. He made large contributions not only to Israel but to the Labour party: and in private treated us to disquisitions as to what social democratic governments were like and exactly what, if we got one next year, we could expect from ours.

His entertainments were no more understated than the rest of him. He had a passion for the theatre, and he had a passion for trade. So he mixed the two up. Theatre boxes, plus this gigantic running supper: snacks before the play, snacks in the intervals, snacks after the play. Other people went to ambassadors’ parties: ambassadors got used to going to his. There were several present in the private room that night. It was no use being finicky. There was more Strasbourg pâté on view than I remembered seeing. One waded in, and ate and drank. It bore a family resemblance to a party at a Russian dacha, when the constraints had gone, the bear hug was embracing you, the great bass voices were getting louder and the lights appeared to be abnormally bright.

While listening with one ear to a conversation on my left (a Hungarian was asking Azik what effect on world politics Kennedy’s assassination would have — it had happened a fortnight before), I talked to Rosalind. Once she had made up to me because I was Roy Calvert’s closest friend: all that was forgotten. I was one of many guests, but she liked to please. How were my family? Like a businessman, or a businessman’s wife, she had docketed their Christian names. She always read everything about us, she said, with a dying fall. That was more like old times. At close quarters she looked her age: the skin under her eyes was delicately lined. (I heard Azik saying robustly that he didn’t believe single individuals affected world politics. Whatever had been going to occur before Kennedy’s death, would occur, for good or bad.) She was using a scent, faint but languorous, that I didn’t recognise. Even before she married her first rich man, she had always been an expert on scents.

“Unless I get another glass of champagne, I shall just collapse,” she said, with another dying fall. That was still more like old times. Soon she was talking about Azik, with adoration, but her own kind of adoration. Except that the name happened to have changed, she might have been talking about Roy Calvert thirty years before. To an outsider’s eyes, they seemed distinctly different men. A good many women had thought Roy romantic. He had been gifted, but he had had to struggle with a manic-depressive nature, often so melancholy that he detested his own life. He had been, at least potentially, a great scholar. Rosalind had adored him. She had learned something about his profession, and could talk as the wife of a scholar should. When she spoke of him, there was no one else in this world: and there was also, in the midst of the worship, a kind of debunking twinkle, as though she alone could point out that, though he was everything a woman could wish for, he could do with a bit of sense.

On the other hand, Azik was not a romantic figure, except in the eyes of someone like Balzac. It would be stretching a point to suggest that he had an over-delicate or tormented nature. But once again, when Rosalind spoke of him, there was no one else in this world. Once again she had learned something about his profession, and could talk as the wife of an international entrepreneur should. And once again, in the midst of the worship, there was a kind of debunking twinkle, as though she alone could point out that, though he was everything a woman could wish for, he could do with a bit of sense.