Adam Thirlwell - Politics

3

I have a very simple theory about the romance of Nana and Moshe. It is this. Their romance was not romantic. Well, it was not ordinarily romantic.

For example, one element that is crucial to the conventional conception of a romance is that a romance is couply. Romance is the opposite of friends.

Friends often complain about this. ‘Stacey’, they say, ‘has abandoned me. She only wants to see Henderson now, all the time.’ On the other hand, Stacey, if we are going to stick with Stacey for the moment, thinks that her friends are too clingy. Maybe this example is a little abstract. It is a little abstract, I can see that. Let me add some detail. Stacey has mastered a lisp. This means that she talks more slowly than other people. She wears three multicoloured friendship bracelets on her right wrist. Henderson, her boyfriend, is younger than she is and this embarrasses her. She is nineteen, he is sixteen.

Anyway, Stacey thinks that her friends do not understand how important it is to devote time to a relationship. This is partly, of course, because she does not want her friends to meet Henderson too often. He is, as I have said, only sixteen.

As for Henderson, his friends also think his relationship is too exclusive. But they have their own theory for this. Henderson never lets them meet Stacey because of, they reckon, her size. Stacey is not the thinnest of girls. Henderson’s friends tease him that he just wants a mother figure. He wants a mother figure with big tits. Henderson’s penis, they say, is umbilically attached to Stacey.

Now, Nana and Moshe were obviously not the same as Stacey and Henderson. No romance is the same.

Nana and Moshe were an unromantic romance.

4

In a leather chair next to Anjali and Nana and Moshe, in the window at mybar, there was a girl. This girl had an olive bandanna and a plait. At the tip of the plait an electric- turquoise flannel scrunchie was wrapped tight.

She was French. She was French Algerian. She was chatting to another French Algerian friend. They were talking in French. ‘Wah,’ she said, ‘wah. Egzagdemaw. Dans la vie. Wah.’ Then she took off a thin olive jumper, revealing a sleeveless black top with a turquoise question mark whose dot was the symbol for a woman — a circle joined above a cross.

It was advertising. The girl hooked her black thready bra straps under her top. Nana looked. Anjali looked. Anjali looked at Nana looking.

But Nana was not a lesbian. She turned to her boyfriend. She asked him how he was.

Moshe was, it turned out, disconsolate. He was slightly nauseous with delicately spiced nibbles. He was sucking a stained finger. Anjali said to him, ‘The thing that’s sweet about you is how you really give complimentree food a chance. You really give it your all. Nothing goes to waste.’ And Nana grinned and said, ‘I know. It must be his puri- tancal side. Hating waste.’

Moshe opened out his arms in a gesture of ‘Why pick on me?’ He said, ‘What’s that style called — the one they used in India, you know the Lutyens thing?’

But Anjali had already said to Nana, ‘I so love that bracelet? Did I tell you last time we, it’s just so wonderful, really gorgeous.’ She said, ‘Where dyou get it?’

Moshe said, ‘No what’s it called?’

‘Oh really?’ said Nana to Anjali. ‘Really? No you did say.’ She said, ‘I don’t know where I, maybe Hoxton Boutique I think oh no no no, it was this little place, you know that yard, if you go a little bit down Brick Lane there’s a yard, with little places. I think it was in one of those,’ she said. ‘And I got a sweatband as well, this really cool thing, a red and white and blue wristband saying “I love Paris” with little metal Eiffel Towers hanging off it. We should go there,’ she said. ‘Not Paris, I mean, Brick Lane.’ ‘Oh cool,’ said Anjali. ‘Thatd be cool.’ ‘Well maybe Paris as well,’ said Nana, grinning.

Moshe said, ‘Have I taken you to the Brick Lane bagel place?’

Nana said, ‘Baygel? You say baygel?’ And Moshe said,

‘Yeh. Why? What do you say?’ Anjali lit a cigarette. Nana said, ‘Well bygel. Everyone used to say bygel.’ He said, ‘Well perhaps in Edgware they say “bygel” but me. No I say “baygel”. And anyway,’ he said.

Anjali blew out smoke at Nana then flyswatted it quickly away with her left hand. ‘You’re from Edgware?’ she said. She said this to Nana. ‘Yeah,’ said Nana. ‘Bu thass amazing,’ said Anjali, ‘I’m from Canons Park.’ ‘Really?’ squeaked Nana.

‘And anyway,’ said Moshe. ‘We should go there, to the Brick Lane Bakery. It’s so cheap there it’s I think fifty pence for a bagel or something. With cream cheese and salmon and evrething.’

Nana said, ‘Oh yeah I know it.’ Moshe said, ‘Oh.’ She said to Anjali, ‘It’s wonderful if you’re there late after clubbing or something.’ ‘Yeah I know it too,’ said Anjali.

Moshe said, ‘Thass a nice street, Brick Lane, a nice place, with the bagels and what’s that bar Two-nine-one no not Two-nine-one what is it One-nine-two no, no, fuck it, Ninety-three Feet East. And the curries,’ he said. He said, ‘Have you been to that restron there, Preem, oh it’s Indo- Saracenic.’

Anjali said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘It’s Indo-Saracenic, the style, the Lutyens style. In India. The exotic Gothic thing. In New Delhi.’ ‘Oh yeh,’ said Anjali. ‘Yeh. Whata bout it?’ ‘Well nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing. I mean I jus like it,’ he said. ‘I was jus trying to make conversation.’

‘Did you know that the largest collection of Bauhaus- style buildings in the world is in Tel Aviv?’ said Nana. ‘They built flats for the workers.’ ‘No I didn’t know that,’ said Moshe. ‘I didn’t know that, darling.’

No, Moshe was not a serious Jewish boy. He was not committed to the history of the Jewish people. If he were asked to locate Tel Aviv on a map of Israel, I am not sure that Moshe could have done it.

I have a simple theory about nationality too. Like romance, nationality does not exist. In fact, nationality is a romance.

Occasionally Moshe enjoyed being overtly Jewish. Sometimes he felt loyal. But he was not inclined to worry about his nation. He did not worry about his Jewishness. This was partly because only his father was Jewish. It was also because his father was not a very Jewish Jew. In 1968 Moshe’s father moved to Israel. By 1973, Moshe’s father had moved back. He had had it with Israel. By 1975 he had joyfully married a girl, who was not Jewish, called Gloria.

At lunch one weekend, Moshe enjoyed telling Nana and lovable Papa how much he had hated Passover. He had only done Passover once, he said. But once was enough. He said, ‘Do you know about Pesach? You have to hunt for the matzo, the youngest has to hunt for the matzo, and my grandpa hid it in the upstairs toilet, you know in the tank, with the ballcock. And then you have to eat it. So I had to eat it. It was terrible. I don know how he got up there,’ said Moshe. ‘My grandpa had Parkinson’s. But he got up there.’

Papa thought this was quite funny. Nana thought this was very funny. She was laughing with her mouth closed and her head shaking backwards and forwards. This was because she had taken a large gulp of water.

‘And then you have to sing this song,’ continued Moshe. ‘A song?’ said Papa. Moshe sang it. ‘“One only kid, one only kid, my father bought for two zuzim, one only kid, one only kid.” No it’s fascinating,’ said Moshe. ‘There’s the kid and the cat and the dog and the stick and the fire and the water and the ox and the butcher and then the angel of death kills the butcher and he kills the ox. No, the other way round. The butcher kills the ox and then the angel of death kills the butcher. It’s just gripping.’