Howard Jacobson - The Mighty Walzer

So it didn’t please me, although from the point of view of our team’s salvation it should have, that his game was several classes above any I’d yet seen with my own eyes. He didn’t jump around like the rest of us, he didn’t bother to exaggerate a feint or overdo his follow-through, he didn’t spend the first five minutes of a game feeling out his opponent, he simply shot out a hand and the point was over. He played as he spoke — rapid sub-machine-gun fire, then the sudden cut-out. Ugly to watch, as it was ugly to listen to, but effective. He was so quick you couldn’t always be certain what stroke he’d played. If that was a forehand drive how had he been able to hit it so flat? If that was a flick on the backhand — and the ball reared as though he’d flicked it — how come we hadn’t seen him turn his wrist over?

Racket-head speed, if you want an answer. Never mind the before and after — at the moment of impact he was able to generate the most extraordinary speed, the pisher he was.

I understood now why he never took his raincoat off. He didn’t need to take his raincoat off. But Aishky, who was still Club Secretary and non-playing captain, insisted he at least strip down to his jacket, by way of showing politeness to the opposing team.

Louis Marks came alive now that Gershom was playing for us. He felt that something of the greatness of the past had returned.

‘You can sniff Barna and Szabados on him,’ he said. ‘Who else plays like that today? You know he was nearly World Champion?’

‘Yeah I know, Louis,’ I said.

‘You know it was only Schiff —’

‘Yeah I know, Louis,’ I said.

Louis shook his head and rubbed his face. ‘It was a terrible thing,’ he said. ‘What a tragedy.’

‘I don’t see how it’s a tragedy,’ I said. ‘Everybody gets beaten. If he’d had any bottle he’d have fought back. A lot of people who were beaten by Schiff went on to become World or European champions.’

‘Who’s talking about being beaten by Schiff? He’d have recovered from that. He did recover from that. He played for England, didn’t he? That’s the tragedy.’

‘What’s the tragedy?’

‘That they stopped him.’

‘What do you mean they stopped him? If he was good enough, why would they have stopped him? They don’t stop you playing for your country just because you’re human drek.’

Louis dismissed my rudeness with a click of his tongue, looked around the room, lowered his voice and made a money-counting gesture with his fingers. ‘Gelt,’ he whispered.

‘What are you saying, Louis? That Gershom wasn’t rich enough to play for England?’

‘Neh! Gelt, gelt!’

‘He was too Jewish? Don’t give me that. You’re beginning to sound like your kid.’

‘Who said anything about Jewish? Gelt, gelt. You know Gershom’s weakness.’

I didn’t. That’s to say I knew so many of his weaknesses I wasn’t able to single out any one of them for special consideration.

Louis had now become so circumspect he was almost inaudible. He spelt it out, so that no impressionable child within a foot of us would be able to make head or tail of what we were discussing. ‘G — a—m — b—l — i—n — g.’

‘Since when does being a g — a—m — b—l — e—r disqualify you for playing for your country?’

‘Ssh! Saichel, saichel! You’re not supposed to gamble on your own results, shmulkie.’

It didn’t seem such a crime to me. If Gershom was that confident of himself …

‘You don’t get it, do you?’ Louis said. He’d begun to look as wild-eyed as the Ancient Mariner. He even clutched me by the sleeve. ‘Gershom bet against himself’

Ah!

With his crossbow, he shot the albatross.

‘Gershom bet against himself?’

‘Chochem! Now he understands!’

‘You’re telling me that Gershom bet on himself to lose when he was playing for England!’

‘How many more times?’

‘And they found out?’

‘Someone squealed. One of the Swedes. That’s who we were playing — Sweden. 1946. He lost every match. Not by much, but by enough. You’d have thought the Swedes would have been grateful. But no. Swedes for you! They were good to us in the War, mind you. Anyway, one squealed and Gershom was finished. Never selected again. That’s the tragedy.’

I fell quiet. Why didn’t I run home then and there and tell my aunties what I’d found out? That Gershom was a man who would sin against his own neshome. Who would poison his own soul. Who would betray the only gift he had. What grief I could have saved them!

But consequences take a long time to pan out. Had Gershom Finkel not bet against himself in 1946, had I not kept silent about what I knew about him, had the aunty of mine he finally plumped for been able to have children of her own, who knows whether I would be living today in the circumstances I do.

I live off Gershom Finkel’s winnings?

Only in a manner of speaking.

And only indirectly.

And only partly.

And not to any very high standard.

Because he didn’t lay that big a bet against himself, the miserable shvontz. He wasn’t just a cheat, he was a cheap cheat.

Aishky Mistofsky was back playing for the Akiva in five months. The progress he’d made was so extraordinary that the Manchester League struck a special medal for him, inaugurated a handicap tournament in his honour, and named him inspirational player of the year. Opposing teams clapped him when he went on to the table. Everybody wanted to be the first to lose to him. There seemed to be some superstition in it, as though losing to a new playing hand was in the same category of trespass as touching a humpback, and therefore bound to be lucky. But by week three of the following season he was out again.

This time, though, his nerves weren’t to blame. He had simply got caught up in the Bedding Wars.

One way or another, what with the blast shattering our windows, and Cheetham Hill Road being closed to traffic for three days, and the police knocking on our doors asking if we recognized a particular suede shoe which had been blown off in the explosion and presumably belonged to the incendiarist, the Bedding Wars affected just about all of us. But Aishky more than most.

Taking the Copestakes to be the aggrieved party — aggrieved in the sense that it was their bedding shop that was blown up — I could claim some small originating role in their disaccommodation myself. It’s just possible that had we not beaten them to the punch for the bomb site between Boots and Woolworths on London Road in Liverpool they wouldn’t have opened up their bedding shop in Cheetham Hill in Manchester and ended up a bomb site themselves.

How my father got to hear that there was a plum pitch going begging in the centre of Liverpool, right by Lime Street Station, a handkerchief of waste ground just big enough to back the van on to, unhampered for some reason by any Toby Mush or bye-laws, and yet enjoying all the advantages of a prime retailing position, I don’t recall and probably never knew. But the Copestakes, father and son, had got to hear about it as well. Every Saturday morning for six weeks we raced one another down Hilton Lane, over Rainsough Brow, past the Agecroft Collieries, across the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal, swinging left on to Bolton Road, sharp right just before Irlams O’ Th’ Height, and then out like the very devil on to the East Lancs Road, approaching Liverpool through Carr Mill and Knowsley, skirting the West Derby Cemetery (‘That’s where we’ll end up if you don’t slow down, Joel’ — Sheeny Waxman), the Sugar Brook Sewage Disposal Works (‘And that’s where you’ll end up if you don’t take a shtum powder’ — my father), and on to the London Road bomb site via Norris Green, Tue Brook and Everton. And every week we won. Sometimes by a whisker, sometimes by a full van’s length, but always by enough to thwart them, for once you’d got your front wheels on to the kerb there was no getting past you. Usually we were neck and neck until about three-quarters of the way along the East Lancs. My father liked to keep them just in sight in his rear-view mirror. Then, with seven or eight miles to go, he’d put his foot down. But on the morning of the seventh Saturday we didn’t see them at all. It was still pitch black. Week by week the race had been starting earlier, to the point where Sheeny was now going without sleep the night before and wondering whether it wouldn’t be easier all round if my father simply picked him up outside the Plaza in his Friday-night jiving and head jockey clobber.