Howard Jacobson - The Mighty Walzer

Shortly before his finals, St John Rivers threw himself out of his little turret window.

So he was right about his life prospects as well.

But I didn’t yet know what was in store for either of us. For Day One, Person One, he was fucking deranged enough.

By the time I got to the Master’s sherry party, which I reckoned had to be number one priority whatever I did next, I was on shpilkes. If my suitcases were wrong then my Kardomah suit was bound to be wrong. St John Rivers had not understood most of what I’d said to him, thinking I was speaking in Manchester tongues — what if the Master asked me to pronounce Boggart Hole Clough? What if he wasn’t looking where he was going and walked into me? What if I walked into him? What if I made an allusion to a mad wife in the attic and he had a mad wife in the attic?

I’ve said it’s catching, embarrassment. And I’d caught it. I was in a fever of it.

We stood in a line and the Master inspected us, like troops. I remember thinking he was going to check behind our ears. We were all freshmen. Welcome to Golem College, that was his message to us. Welcome, men.

Men? I’d become a man all of a sudden. If I was a man why didn’t I feel like a man? And why didn’t the others look like men?

Why didn’t the Master look like a man, come to that?

He didn’t have a young face exactly. In fact, when you got close, you could see that it was coming apart, the jaw precarious, the cheeks dropping, the eyes loose enough to be shaken out of their sockets. But he bore no signs of wear and tear. It wasn’t dilapidation that was at work on him, it was disparity. No two features agreed. His face had simply fallen out with itself.

He walked along the line, asking names and shaking hands. When he came to me something extraordinary happened. He said, ‘Don’t tell me.’ Then he lowered his head, showing me his baldness. Was I meant to kiss it? Was that what you did when you met a Lord? ‘Don’t tell me, don’t tell me,’ he said again, tapping his temples. Then he came back up smiling. Not one tooth alike unto any other, except in the matter of looseness. ‘Walzer!’ he said. And he played an imaginary ping-pong shot, a scooping backhand drive that would have missed the table by a mile.

‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘That’s me.’

‘Well?’ he waited. ‘What’s your response?’ And when he saw that I was nonplussed he played the shot again, this time from a less cramped position and with more topspin. ‘Well, Mr Walzer?’

Was I really expected to pretend to hit it back? Were we really going to play a game of shadow ping-pong with everybody watching? And was I required to let him win?

I chopped. Deep and low. My classy forehand chop from before the days of sponge and sandwich.

‘Good man,’ he laughed, moving on. ‘You’ll do.’

Not keeping it simple, that was always my trouble. Just like my father with his Yo-Yo. ‘Point to you actually, Master,’ I said. ‘I’ve netted my return.’

He was polite enough to nod. But I could see that already I bored him. Prolix. Pity.

For my part I was chuffed that he knew my name almost alone of all the line of freshmen, but I had mixed feelings about being here on the strength of my ping-pong. I thought I’d put all that behind me with the swag and tsatskes. To be resurrected, as a fall-back position, only if I flunked Collins Classics. That’s assuming I could resurrect it.

‘What was all that about?’ St John Fivers asked. He seemed to know who I was again.

But he walked away while I was telling him.

An improbably tall person, neither man nor boy, surveyed me through what, from that distance, looked like an airman’s helmet, but was in fact nothing other than a pair of very square spectacles on a very square face. ‘You’re not a bloody hearty, are you?’ he demanded.

I wasn’t confident I could get words to carry to his height. So I lobbed him up a Bug and Dniester shrug. Meaning, if you look at it this way, but then again if you look at it that way …

‘Well are you or aren’t you?’

It was actually a reprimand. If I stayed talking to him any longer he’d be telling me to make my bloody mind up. And he was no less of a freshman than I was. I’d seen him in the line, inclining extravagantly to the Master who himself was no short-arse. So I put into practice the one lesson in Cambridge etiquette I’d already learnt and left him to his ire. But it embarrassed me to do it. It wasn’t how I’d been brought up to behave. It contravened the convention of tcheppehing.

‘Can’t say I blame you,’ someone whispered in my ear.

I turned around in surprise. And found myself looking into an open face, clear blue eyes, a broad smile, a slightly dizzy quiff of blond hair, relaxed stance, easy demeanour — someone like myself, at last!

‘Oliver Walzer,’ I said, holding out my hand.

‘Robin Clarke,’ he said pleasantly, holding out his.

‘Bit of a brute for someone who offers not to approve of hearties, isn’t he?’ I said.

‘Yes, isn’t he. Name’s Marcus Whiting, I’m told. Classics scholar. They say very brilliant.’

I pooh-poohed that. ‘We’re all very brilliant,’ I said.

‘Oh, I’m not. I’m not brilliant at all.’

‘You wouldn’t be here, else,’ I said. Already I liked him. Maybe he wasn’t very brilliant but I liked him. The goyishe friend — could this one be the goyishe friend? Whose sister I would marry in a little country church in Gloucestershire? Where we would raise horses and soft-voiced goyishe children called Christopher and Amelia? And only ever have cheese after dinner?

He laughed. ‘Trust me I’m not,’ he said. ‘I’m not even clever. But I can see you are.’

‘Brilliant or clever?’

‘Brilliant.’

I smiled and shook my head.

‘Yes, you are,’ he said. ‘All Jews are brilliant.’

I swallowed hard. I could have walked away but I foresaw an element of farce in that. Ricocheting from one to the other like a steel ball on a bagatelle board.

‘Not all Jews,’ I said. ‘Just as not all gentiles.’

He was still shining his countenance upon me. ‘I’m glad you said gentiles and not Christians,’ he said. ‘It’s a common mistake. As a Christian myself I feel that there is a great deal of the Jew in me. Where would we Christians be without the Jews after all?’

‘Where indeed,’ I said.

‘Which is why it’s so important to Christians like myself to try to win Jews back to their original faith …’

I held up a hand. ‘No,’ I said.

‘You don’t even know what you’re saying no to yet.’

‘I do,’ I said. ‘I’m saying no to everything.’

‘Couldn’t we meet over a beer, to talk about it.’

‘Jews don’t drink beer,’ I said. ‘It interferes with their brain cells.’

He fell quiet for a moment or two. Then he said, ‘I see that I’ve hurt your feelings. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to do that. I love all Jews.’

‘Well that’s more than I do,’ I said.

Now that he’d said he’d hurt my feelings I needed to escape him. As long as he’d only hurt my feelings I was no more than annoyed by him. But once he’d said he’d hurt my feelings, he’d hurt my feelings.

So stuff his sister.

‘I have another party to go to,’ I said.

‘Quaffers? I’m off to that. I’m a bit of a hearty myself, I have to confess. Hockey. You’re ping-pong, I gather. I’ll walk over with you.’

‘No need,’ I said. ‘I’m going to Yorath and Rubella’s.’

On such pin heads do major life decisions turn.

Although I didn’t of course know this at the time, the distinguishing feature of a Yorath and Rubella party was that neither Yorath nor Rubella was ever at it. At least not until it was over. Too shy. In Yorath’s case too shy and too angry and too domestically indicated. In Rubella’s case, just too shy.