Howard Jacobson - Kalooki Nights

How did she remember that? ‘I wasn’t drawing Shani, I was drawing the boots.’

‘Yes, so that you could put her in a camp. I never understood what all that was about, Maxie. Concentration camps?’

‘I never put Shani in a camp. I drew the boots, that was it.’

‘And you put the boots in the camp. It’s the same thing. They

were Shani’s boots.’

‘Ma, it’s what you do if you draw. You draw from life.’

‘Life I wouldn’t have minded. What you were drawing, Maxie, was death. Camps, camps, camps — where did you get all that stuff from? The only camp you ever went to was Butlin’s.’

I rang off, making my usual promise to go up and see her soon. Had I been any kind of son I’d have kidnapped her from Crumpsall and brought her down to live with me in Belsize Park, where Jews were not pretending they were back in Poland. Me, my mother, Manny — it would have made a nice household, all that was left of the Crumpsall that had been.

But then again, not if Manny was keeping a gun on the premises.

Unable to sleep, I made myself some tea and paced the floor. Someone has to sort things out . If that didn’t mean what I had originally thought it meant, what did it mean?

An idea came to me, shocking at first, but plausible the more I thought about it.

Dorothy.

The cleanest, that’s to say the most effective way to have sorted things out was to have got rid of Dorothy.

Five thousand smackers would have been the cleanest way to do it, but she would surely have said no to that, just as Mick Kalooki had, and anyway, where was Manny going to lay his hands on that sort of money?

Why, after getting rid of Dorothy, Manny would have needed to get rid of his parents as well was a stage too far in my reasoning. But blaming them for making a murderer of him was certainly one motive. As was sparing them from discovering what he’d done. You can kill out of love as well as hate, as he had just reminded me.

But I was running ahead of my own thoughts. Dorothy shot and killed, or Dorothy shot and wounded, or Dorothy shot and missed, was substanceless imagining. Enough — terrible enough — just to imagine Manny wanting Dorothy to be shot. The Eleventh Commandment: you don’t go round killing people in your head. Least of all when the worst thing they’ve done to you is to fall in love with your brother. You should love those, should you not, who love those to whom you are devoted? You should be bound by the concurrence of your affections. As Shani believed Tsedraiter Ike should have been bound to Mick.

Then again, let Dorothy’s virtues plead angel-tongued against her taking off, she had wreaked havoc on the Washinskys. Twice, and twice is more than twice as bad as once. Selick Washinsky might make a better job of dying this time round. Asher too might not survive it all again. True, Manny had looked with a brother’s love into Asher’s heart and imagined it as an empty bed which now, miraculously, was warm. But what if this rerun of old happiness merely presaged a rerun of old sorrows? She had made a ghost of Asher before; who was to say she would not make a ghost of him again.

It should have been over. Tragically over, but over. Manny had been on her side the first time. But her second coming changed the distribution of right and wrong.

And then there was himself to consider. Were his feelings of no account? Dorothy had stepped in between him and his brother — unceremoniously elbowing him aside — palpitating with the greed of life, just as Manny was thinking that his own life, at last, was brimming over with happiness.

Kill or be killed.

I’d have tackled him with this the next day had he allowed me. But he must have known something along these lines was in the offing. He spent the day in bed, whatever he knew. Only coming out to make himself a honey and banana sandwich when he thought I wasn’t around.

He spent the next day in bed as well. And the next.

This might have been pure fancy but it was as though he had turned himself in for a crime for which he had until now escaped punishment, appointing me to be his warder.

It felt quiet and oddly comforting in the house. I half wanted to go round at night, checking the cells, whistling, and jingling my keys.

1

On the evening of the third day, Francine rang. How was our yeshiva boy, she wanted to know. I tried my new theory out on her — not that of my house having become a prison, but Manny pointing a gun at Dorothy.

She was excited by the gun element. ‘A gun’s good,’ she said. ‘We like guns.’

‘Except,’ I said, going off my own theory the minute I voiced it, ‘I think it’s all baloney.’

‘Why do you think it’s all baloney?’

‘Well, for a start because there’s no reason to believe he shot anybody, except in his own head.’

Shooting people in his own head she was less excited by. ‘Not quite so televisual,’ she told me. ‘And besides, I rather liked where we were going last time. Manny sweet on the girl.’

‘Manny? Sweet? Manny doesn’t do sweet.’

‘Every man does sweet, Max. Even weird ones with

payess.’ Payess. Hebrew for sidelocks. How did she know payess?

( Ways of Saying Payess When You’re Not Jewish , Vol. III.)

‘Run it by me, Francine,’ I said.

‘Manny sweet on girl, Manny jealous of his brother, Manny thinking of killing his brother, Manny then sparing his brother out of love for the girl, and killing his parents instead. .’

’Because he blamed them for putting him in payess and making him unlovable?’

‘Well, that as well, certainly, but more I think because he wanted to make a statement about Jewish attitudes to Gentiles. He killed his parents because he could not forgive the things they had said about the girl. He was killing his religion. We can run on that. It’s only a shame — from the point of view of narrative I mean — that he didn’t then turn the gun on himself. That would have been perfect.’

‘Not gun, gas taps.’

‘Yes, gas taps, more perfect still.’

But if we were going in that direction, I had another thought. Asher, in despair of ever getting his parents to accept Dorothy, realising that they will never leave him alone so long as he is with her, and discovering, what is more, that they have tried to get him certified as a lunatic, turns the gas taps on them. Manny, out of love for the girl, takes the rap. ‘I accept that you love him and will never love me, so be it, and rather than see you suffer another moment’s unhappiness I will rot away my life in prison, adieu, my lovely, my golden faigeleh, be happy with my brother, this is a far far better thing, blah blah.’ Several years later, when Manny learns that Asher has turned into a love rat, cheating on Dorothy with any woman he can lay his hands on, he thinks of having him rubbed out. No — better still — Dorothy, who warned Asher she would kill him if he ever left her again, goes to Manny and asks him to arrange to have Asher rubbed out. Manny says he’ll see what he can do. The gun wasn’t literally in Manny’s hands. He put a contract out. Not hard to do when you’re inside. Whisper, whisper, bar of chocolate, maybe a blow job, and it’s as good as done. Only at the last minute he relented. He couldn’t make Dorothy husbandless — nor could he make her a murderer in the eyes of God — no matter what sort of mamzer the husband had turned out to be.

A longer silence than usual from Francine. Then, ‘Are you taking the piss, Max?’

Who are you, Maxie Glickman? What’s your game?