Howard Jacobson - Kalooki Nights

At least not with men. And even with the women, I always ran before a blow could be landed.

Was it simply Manny’s bad luck? Did these misadventures just befall him? Or was there something in his nature that sought them out?

Not hard to imagine, whatever one makes of Manny’s fit, what must have been going through Asher’s mind. His father trying to kill him, his brother foaming at the mouth, his mother yelling ‘Stop it! Stop it!’ and throwing salt on the combatants, as though to kosher them into stopping. Is any woman worth all this? Asher must have asked himself. But the opposite thought, too, must have seized him: who wouldn’t run to any woman to escape all this? And with each thought the corresponding image — Dorothy, lovely but insubstantial, just a girl, to be relinquished; and Dorothy, the girl who loved him, who wouldn’t raise a finger to harm him, and with whom every moment was as an eternity of peace.

Whether or not it was the salt that did it, a kind of peace was restored here too. The parties withdrew. Nothing was said. Each waiting for the other to make the next move. Briefly, Asher gave way to the crazy fantasy that the hours of silence denoted the beginnings of a change of heart on his parents’ part. They would come to see that his happiness was paramount. Little by little they were growing to understand that he would be no less Jewish for being with the fire-yekelte ’s German daughter — who was, when all was said and done, only half -German, don’t forget that — but on the contrary that he would be the more Jewish as a consequence of being with her, for was it not a Jew’s responsibility to be happy and to glory in the variousness of the world which Elohim had made? It was possible, yes it was possible that on their own and in the quiet of their confabulations they would come to see that. For their part, his parents were less sanguine. You can’t leave a Jewish boy with a non-Jewish woman and expect him to come to his senses unaided. That is not how it happens. The Jewish boy doesn’t have the seichel, the nous, and the non-Jewish woman doesn’t have the charity. How can she have? She has laid her hands on the one thing non-Jewish women prize above all others. She has got herself a yeshiva bocher. Sidelocks, fringes, yarmulke, the lot. The prince she has been dreaming of all her life. You can’t even blame her for her cupidity. What woman wouldn’t do the same! So all the silence of Selick and Channa Washinsky denoted was a change of plan. They had tried holding him responsible for killing his father, now they would try holding him responsible for destroying their marriage.

‘You know what your father is saying to me,’ Channa told her son. ‘He is saying that it is my fault. That the reason you are as you are is because I have brought you up badly, that his children are a bitter disappointment to him due to my misguidance. He believes that the twenty years we’ve been together are wasted.’

‘But that’s nonsense. .’

‘Is it? Isn’t the value of our marriage in our children? Aren’t you the proof of whether it has been successful or not?’

‘And you’re saying that it’s not? And that your children are the reason?’

‘Well, you’re the clever one, Asher. You tell me. You tell me how proud of you we should be.’

It was at that moment, and I have it from the horse ’s mouth, that Manny came home from school. As to how much he had heard about the bitter disappointments which he too, it seemed, had caused his parents — ‘Enough,’ was what he told me.

Which was pretty much the way he felt about Asher as well. Enough. Enough now. ‘You’re ruining everything,’ he said. ‘You’re not my brother any more. Why don’t you just go.’

‘See!’ Channa Washinsky said. ‘See what’s happening to this family.’

‘Yes I do,’ Asher said. ‘I see exactly what’s happening to this family.’ And with that he bolted. To hell with everybody. And that included Dorothy. He was meant to be meeting her that evening. Her father was cooking for some relatives she wanted him to meet. But to Asher that felt too nakedly manipulative in its long-suffering. I can’t meet any of your family, but I introduce you with pride to all of mine . Fucking Germans. Fucking Germans with their fucking devious remorse. No thank you. He’d done with relatives, Jews or Germans. For two weeks he stayed with a friend in Birmingham. They prayed together, the rocking rhythm soothing Asher’s heart. They went to a couple of midweek football matches together where they prayed again. On Friday evenings they went to the synagogue. Midway through the service on the second Friday Asher thought of Dorothy. On the Shabbes he caught the train back to Manchester, energised by the transgression, and walked the three or four miles from the station to her home. Not so many people came out to stare at him now. They were used to him. And besides, he had lost his juice. He no longer looked like a pomegranate on legs.

Dorothy was not there. For a moment Asher thought she might have been standing in for her mother and putting in a little fireyekelte-ing at his parents’ house. But the likelihood now was that not even her mother went there any more. Albert Beckman was short with him. ‘You cannot expect her to wait here for you for ever,’ he said.

‘I don’t,’ Asher said.

‘My daughter is very upset because she hasn’t heard from you. When you last spoke you told her you were coming to see her in an hour. We were all expecting you.’

‘I am sorry for that,’ Asher said. ‘And I can imagine how Dorothy must have felt. It’s been very upsetting for me too.’

‘We made sacrifices for you,’ Albert Beckman said, not looking at Asher.

‘Sacrifices?’ Asher racked his brain. What sacrifices?

‘We took a risk on you.’

Asher preferred risk to sacrifice, but he wasn’t sure what the risk was either. ‘You make me sound like a danger you braved,’ he said. ‘What was dangerous about me?’

‘Not you in yourself. The situation.’

Asher rolled his eyes. You think the situation has been risky for you ? You should try it from my end! But he knew there was nothing to be gained from comparing risks, or from comparing sacrifices, come to that. The German owed the Jew. The Jew owed the German nothing. That was where Asher stood. That was where I make him stand. But he also knew how little was to be gained from saying that. So he simply stated what he thought — ‘The situation is between me and Dorothy.’

‘Yes, but it is never as simple as that.’

‘Where is she?’ Asher asked.

‘She has gone away.’ And though her father appeared to regret the words he ’d used, and even, Asher thought, wished he could take them back, he wasn’t going to tell Asher where she had gone to. Or when she would return.

Asher walked home in tears, before realising he no longer thought of it as home and shouldn’t have been going there. His father was sewing in the window and pretended not to see him. His mother started when he entered. ‘I hope you are here to tell me it’s all finished,’ she said. No preliminaries. No other matter on their minds. Was it over or wasn’t it. Was he seeing her or wasn’t he. The spirituality of his family reduced to that. To a shtupp. Was he or wasn’t he still penetrating the German girl?

‘It looks like you might have your wish,’ he said.

‘What does that mean?’

‘Dorothy can’t take any more.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means that I’ve been sent packing.’

‘And what do you intend to do about that?’

‘There is nothing I can do. I have to accept it.’

‘Good. If that’s true, I will tell your father.’

‘Tell him what you like. Just don’t tell him I’m happy.’