Howard Jacobson - The Mighty Walzer

‘Shemedik,’ Aishky called back from the shadows, half amused, but only half amused, by his own bashfulness.

‘Shemedik! Since when were you shemedik?’

‘Me? I’ve always been shy.’ He had appeared now, come out from his hiding place to see us, beaming, carrying a torch and wearing his security officer’s uniform. A cap, even.

He was the same. Twink I’d had to piece together again, painfully slowly, never sure that I’d ever really be able to get him to re-form. Now here was Aishky, older to look at than Twink, settling for being an old man, as Twink decidedly was not, yet unmistakably the person I’d known a thousand years before.

Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing I had no idea.

As for the kind of security officer he made — well, you’d have thought twice before breaking into any building of which he had charge. You’d have thought twice and then done it.

But maybe nobody was into stealing jam these days.

We crossed the road to a dismal pub Aishky claimed to know, though when I asked him what he wanted to drink he was at a loss to remember the name of a single tipple.

‘Lager and lime?’ Twink helped out. ‘Shandy? Club soda? Bitter lemon?’

‘What are you having?’ he asked Twink.

Twink turned to me.

Nice as it was to be back in the fifties I had a yen for a contemporary drink. ‘I’m going to have red wine,’ I said.

‘Yeah, I’ll have that too,’ Aishky said.

Twink looked worried for him. ‘It won’t be sweet, you know, Aishk.’

‘Won’t it?’

‘Why don’t we all have whisky?’ I suggested.

So that was what we did. Whisky we all knew, from weddings and funerals. And of course from circumcisions. That’s your first touch of the hard stuff, a suck of Scotch from your father’s finger to take the pain away from your guillotined little in-between on the eighth day of your first and only life on earth. No wonder we’re not drinkers.

There was no one in the pub but us, yet the noise was deafening. In the absence of anyone to prompt it, the jukebox played its own favourites. The fruit machines made horrible jeering electronic sounds. The bar staff rattled glasses. Anything not to have to hear silence.

We sat by the door where it was quietest and raised our whisky glasses to one another. The three musketeers.

Now what?

I looked into my glass. Aishky looked up at the ceiling.

Could it be that we no longer had anything to musketeer about?

Glory be to Twink. ‘Guess who I saw the other day at G-MEX,’ he said, ‘just before I ran into Oliver? Charlie Williamson. Remember him, Aishk? From Mather and Platt? Used to play in Wellingtons?’

‘Very hard to beat,’ Aishky said.

‘I’m not kidding you, Oliver, this feller would turn up on a motorbike and come to the table in leather trousers and Wellingtons …’

‘A mad defender,’ Aishky said.

‘That’s right. Still is. He’d come to the table in Wellingtons, isn’t that right, Aishky? — it was very hard to keep your face straight.’

‘The other one that got me,’ Aishky said, ‘was John Smedley who used to play in his socks.’

‘Jack Smedley.’

‘Jack Smedley, that’s right. Played for the Tax Office …’

‘Social Security.’

‘Social Security, that’s right. He had this meshuggener backhand which he’d hit while he was sliding about in his socks.’

‘Also hard to beat.’

‘That’s what I’m saying. You couldn’t tell what his feet were doing. You couldn’t hear him.’

‘Didn’t you lose to him once, Aishk, in a cup match?’

‘Nearly lost to him. Until I changed my game at seven — nothing down in the decider.’

‘That’s right. I remember. We were all having heart attacks.’

‘What did you do to change your game, Aishky?’ I asked.

‘I took my pumps off and played in my socks. So now he couldn’t hear me . It was one of the quietest games of table tennis ever played.’

‘That reminds me of Pawel Trepper from the Polish Circle, do you remember him? A mute. Very good-looking guy. He could have been a model. But deaf as a post. If you were umpiring you had to write the score in the air with your finger.’

‘Also hard to beat,’ Aishky said.

‘ Very hard to beat. Though he always liked to win with a smash. Sometimes he’d put five or six off the table trying to clinch it.’

‘That’s how I beat him,’ Aishky remembered.

‘Mind you,’ Twink continued, ‘even you at one time, right, would think nothing of hitting five or six off the table. Am I right?’

Aishky waved the recollection away with his hand. For the first time I noticed the missing fingers. Not so bad as I’d remembered. Only the tips were gone. And what was left had healed over nicely.

‘Those were the days,’ Twink said.

Aishky had fallen quiet.

But not Aishky’s uncle Twink. ‘So do you look back on it all fondly, Aishk, the way we do?’

‘Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t,’ Aishky admitted. ‘I’m full of emotions you know.’

‘I know,’ Twink said.

‘I took the death of my parents very badly.’

‘I know you did,’ Twink said.

‘When my father was put in the nursing home I went off my rocker.’

‘How old was he?’

‘Eighty-seven.’

That’s a good age, Aishky.’

‘No — it’s what happened to him that made me ill. He finished up with blood dripping in his head. I loved my father. I can’t bear it even now. You’ll think this is mad, but some nights I bang my head against the wall. I say meshuggener things to myself.’

He was well on the way to saying meshuggener things to himself this night. He had stopped noticing us. We needn’t have been there. I didn’t begrudge him a soliloquy but I already knew the gist of the mantra from our phone call. Next it would be the Holocaust. He was all right so long as we could keep him away from death and the Holocaust — aren’t we all all right so long as you can keep us away from death and the Holocaust? — so I interrupted Twink who was trying to reason him out of it (‘You can get too far in, Aishky, you know that yourself, you can think too much about your parents however much you loved them’) by asking Aishky if he still listened to Mario Lanza.

It worked. The old shy Esau smile returned to his face. He took his security officer’s cap off for the first time. Not bald, I was pleased to see, stubbly but not bald. ‘Do you remember this one?’ he said. ‘M’appari, tut amor …’

‘I’ve got the best recording of that,’ Twink said. ‘Carreras. Before he took ill …’

‘O, my babby, my curly-headed babby,’ Aishky half-said, half-sang. ‘I always loved that.’

‘Paul Robeson,’ Twink said.

‘I’ll tell you who was one of my favourites,’ Aishky said. ‘Peter Dawson. Do you remember “On the Road to Mandalay”?’

‘Sing it for us, Aishk,’ I said.

‘Isn’t there too much baritone in that for you, Aishky?’ Twink fretted.

Aishky didn’t think so. Me neither. We were in need of some deep notes. He looked around to see who was listening, saw that no one was, cleared his throat, and sang it for us — Peter Dawson, Peter Dawson as I live and breathe.

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin’ lazy at the sea,

There’s a Burma girl a-sittin’, and I know she thinks of me …

I drifted off on the extravagant wings of song. Aishky in Mandalay. Aishky gone from Mandalay and the Burma girl a-sittin’, not knowing that her British soldier was in Cheetham Hill, carrying a night watchman’s torch and saying meshuggener things to himself.

The dawn would have come up like thunder for a second time had the barman not broken all our reveries ringing his accursed bell.