Howard Jacobson - The Mighty Walzer

The only thing mixed about Copestake was the business he was doing, swallowing up every import warehouse and factory, every betting shop and flop house he could get his hands on in a rough square bounded by Cheetham Hill Road, Waterloo Road, Derby Street, and Strangeways. He’d grown up there, poor and unloved — for who can love a cockroach? Not even another cockroach can love a cockroach — and now was systematically making himself sole landlord of the place. Copestake returns! Deny me this time!

Another psychotic winner riding in triumph through Persepolis.

Among the warehouses he had most recently gobbled down was Patkin Bros, importers of chipped tsatskes from Taiwan, every one a shneid — my father’s biggest creditor. If Patkin Bros called in then that was that. And why wouldn’t they, now they were Patkin Bros only in name, in reality Cockroach and Son?

For two whole weeks my father went about klopping the side of his head. ‘How do you like it! Of all people! Him, of all people! What are the chances of that happening? Copestake! A klog oyf im! How many million people are there in Manchester? Two million? Three million? And it has to be Copestake. What are the chances of that? You’re the mathematician, Oliver — what are the chances of that?’

‘Between two and three million to one,’ I said.

Knowing the cold figures only made it worse. ‘Three million to one! Three million to one and it has to be that farbissener! My mazel!’

‘You could try talking to him,’ my mother said, from the shadows. She was lying down with a cold compress on her head. Migraine. We all had one. A migraine each. All except my father who could go on and on klopping the side of his head and never even get a headache.

‘I’ve tried talking to him.’

‘Recently?’

‘What’s recently? I’ve tried talking to him. He doesn’t talk. He puts bricks under vans. And he swears like a yok.’

‘I could try talking to her.’

‘Why bother talking to her? She’s tsedrait. She shakes all day.’

‘She’s got St Vitus’s. You should be sorry for her. She didn’t shake before she married him. She was a Fingerhutt before she married him.’

‘I know she was a Fingerhutt. What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘I went to school with her.’

‘I went to school with him.’

‘They were nice people, the Fingerhutts. Her father was a lovely man. Very gentle. I could talk to her.’

‘What about? Her father? They may be very nice people, the Fingerhutts, they may be the nicest people in Manchester. But they’ll still want their money.’

‘I thought you said it’s not their money. I thought you said it’s Morris and Henry Patkin’s money.’

He threw his hands in the air. ‘Just leave it to me,’ he said. ‘You’ve never understood money.’

And a month later he was mechullah.

All very well having everything we owned in my mother’s name, we still had to upkeep it. And we still had to eat.

My sisters were working, but they had flibbertigibbet jobs like demonstrating in Kendalls or giving away cigarettes at car shows, and they spent more on vanity bags and false eyelashes than they earned. Their long-term prospects were good — you never heard of a demonstrator at Kendalls who didn’t ultimately marry well — but until then we couldn’t look to them to do much more than buy their own bagels every Sunday. And not give my father the platz in these trying times by being seen out on the arm of a shvartzer.

As for me, I’d be off to Golem College any day now, and there was no question of my putting that off to help out. I was the future. Our hedge against ever having to be sent back to the Bug.

‘I could try the buses again,’ my father said.

‘Over my dead body,’ my mother told him.

Shtuck, that’s what we were in. Serious shtuck.

Then, out of the blue, mitten derinnen, Sheeny turned up with a suggestion. Lancelot Waxman, his armour ringing as he rode between the barley sheaves. Singing tirra lirra, instead of oink oink.

Giving Sheeny his cards hadn’t been easy for my father. Despite their age difference, they had grown fond of each other. Sheeny was like a little old man half the time, anyway. And my father was more of a boy than I had ever succeeded in being. So they met each other coming the other way. They had good times together. Better times, I suspect, than they ever let on. And no doubt better times than Sheeny and I had ever had. They were on a similar wavelength. They were both pleasure opportunists. They didn’t think there was anything wrong with tsatskying if it made you happy. And they worked well as a team. As my father said, they shifted a lot of gear between them.

‘It won’t be the same without you revving up the Commer outside my lettee in the shvitzing cold, Joel,’ Sheeny told him. ‘I won’t know what to do with myself Shabbes mornings.’

‘You could try going to shool,’ my father said.

‘Only if you pick me up and take me, Joel.’

I wasn’t there when they shook hands and called it quits, but my father described the farewells to us. ‘I don’t know what the kid’s going to do now,’ he said. ‘He took it hard.’

He was taking it hard himself.

‘He’s not a kid,’ I said. ‘He’s five years older than me. And every grafter in Manchester will be after him once the word’s out that you’ve sacked him.’

‘I haven’t sacked him. That farbissener Copestake’s sacked him.’

A couple of afternoons later, sitting over keife and coffee in the KD, Sheeny said, ‘I’m worried about your old man. He’s getting on. What’s he going to do now?’

That was the nice thing about the KD. You had to have skirt with you but you weren’t obliged to address it. You just talked normally, as though it wasn’t there.

‘He isn’t getting on,’ I said. ‘He’s only about five years older than me. He’ll be all right. He’s a good grafter.’

‘You’re telling me he’s a good grafter? Listen to me, Oliver — he’s the best grafter there is, your old man.’

‘Then he’ll be all right. He’ll find something. Another coffee, girls?’

But no one is in too much of a hurry to employ a person who’s just gone mechullah, good grafter or not. It’s bad karma, apart from anything else. Shit sticks. And you’re always wondering — did he go bust because he’s a shmuck or because he’s a villain?

Of course your old enemies are quick to offer you something demeaning. Copestake himself put it about, for example, that he was prepared to let bygones be bygones and rustle my father up a warehouseman’s job or the like provided he came crawling on his belly to ask for it.

‘I’d rather beg on the streets,’ my father said.

Which, week by week, was looking more and more like his only option. Until — tirra lirra — Lancelot Waxman came riding out of the shtuck-mist.

I was surprised to see him at the door. I wasn’t aware we were going out that night. I was also surprised not to see him in a whistle and flute (which meant we definitely weren’t going out that night). He was wearing jeans, which I’d never suspected him of owning, and a turtleneck sweater, ditto. Casual didn’t suit him. It diminished him. It took away from his seriousness. Especially the roll neck, which chafed his skin and exacerbated the twitching. But I now understand that his choice of wardrobe was dictated by exquisite tact. He didn’t want to look prosperous. He didn’t want to appear up while my father was down. He didn’t want to look like the boss. For that was the proposition he had come to put. That he should now employ my father!

‘This is the emmes, Joel. I’m offering you the job you gave me, except that I’ll still be pitching and you’ll still be working the edge. It’ll be no different. You can even pick me up in the shvitzing cold. But half an hour later.’