Howard Jacobson - J

‘The gods of Ludgvennok.’

‘I don’t much care about anybody’s gods,’ Gutkind said. ‘I care more about me.’

‘Well it’s the twilight of you too, ain’t it? Look at your fucking dog, man. What are you doing here, in this whited-out shit-heap, if you’ll pardon my Latin, trying — unsuccessfully by your own account — to solve murders that never will be solved? What am I doing over at Ludgvennok, excuse me’ — here he spat, trying to avoid the cat — ‘ Port Reuben , as I have to call it, what am I doing cutting aphids’ hair in Port Cunting Reuben for a living? We were gods once. Now look at us. The last two men on the planet to have listened to Tristan und Isolde .’

Eugene Gutkind fell into a melancholy trance, as though imagining the time when he trod the earth like a god, a monocle in his eye such as Clarence Worthing must have worn, in his hand a silver-topped cane, on his arm, highly perfumed. .

In reality there was spinach on his shoes. ‘So who or what reduced us to this?’ he asked, not expecting an answer.

‘Saying sorry,’ Kroplik said. ‘Saying sorry is what did it. You never heard the gods apologise. They let loose their thunderbolts and whoever they hit, they hit. Their own stupid fault for being in the way.’

‘I’m a fair-minded man. .’ Gutkind said.

‘For a policeman. .’

‘I’m a fair-minded man for anyone. I don’t mind saying sorry if I’ve done something to say sorry for. But you can’t say sorry if you’ve done nothing. You can’t find a man guilty if there’s been no crime.’

‘Well look at it this way, Detective Inspector — there are plenty of unsolved crimes kicking about. And plenty of uncaught criminals. Missy Morgenstern’s murderer for one. Does it matter if you end up punishing the wrong man? Not a bit of it. The wrongfully guilty balance the wrongfully innocent. What goes around comes around. Pick yourself up an aphid. They’re all murderers by association. Hang the lot.’

Detective Inspector Gutkind felt himself growing irritated by Densdell Kroplik’s misplaced ire. It struck him as messy and unserious. His own life might have been dismal but it was ordered. It had feeling in it. He offered his guest a whisky. Maybe a whisky would concentrate his mind.

‘Let’s agree about something,’ he said.

‘We do. The genius of Richard Wagner. And the end of the world.’

‘No. Let’s agree about saying sorry. We shouldn’t be saying it — we agree about that, don’t we?’

Kroplik raised his dusty whisky glass and finished off its contents. ‘We do. We agree about most things. And about that most of all. Fuck saying sorry!’

‘Fuck saying sorry!’

The air was thick with rebellion.

‘Bloody Gutkind!’ Kroplik suddenly expostulated.

Gutkind looked alarmed.

‘Bloody Kroplik!’ Kroplik continued. ‘What kind of a name is Kroplik, for Christ’s sake? What kind of a name is Gutkind? We sound like a comedy team — Kroplik and Gutkind.’

‘Or Gutkind and Kroplik.’

The policeman Eugene Gutkind sharing the rarity of a joke with the historian Densdell Kroplik.

‘I am glad,’ said Kroplik sarcastically, shifting his weight from one thigh to another, disarranging the cushions on the detective’s sofa, ‘that you are able to find humour in this.’

‘On the contrary, I agree with you. They turn us into a pair of comedians, though our lives are essentially tragic, and for that we are the ones who have to say we’re sorry. I find no humour in it whatsoever.’

‘Good. Then enough’s enough. We are gods not clowns, and gods apologise to no one for their crimes, because what a god does can’t be called a crime. Nicht wahr ?’

‘What?’

‘ Nicht wahr ? Wagnerian for don’t you agree. I thought you’d know that. I bet even your dog knows that.’

The cat pricked the ear nearest to Kroplik. ‘ Nicht wahr ?’ Kroplik shouted into it.

‘These days we don’t get to hear much German in St Eber,’ Gutkind said, as much in defence of the cat as himself.

‘Pity. But Gutkind’s got a bit of a German ring to it, don’t you think? Gut and kinder ?

‘I suppose it has. Like Krop and lik .’

‘You see what the aphid swines have done to us? Now we’re fighting on behalf of names that don’t even belong to us. What’s your actual name? What did the whores call you in the good old days? Mr. .? Mr What? Or did you let them call you Eugene? Take me, Eugene. Use me, Eugene.’

If Kroplik isn’t mistaken, Gutkind blushes.

‘Whatever my name was then, I was too young to give it to whores.’

‘Your father then. . your grandfather. . how did the whores address them?’

These were infractions too far for Detective Inspector Gutkind, Wagner or no Wagner. He was not a man who had ever visited a whore. And nor, he knew in his soul, had any of the men in his family before him. It had always been ideal love they’d longed for. A beautiful woman, smelling of Prague or Vienna, light on their arm, transported into an ecstasy of extinction — the two of them breathing their last together. . ertrinken . . versinken . . unbewußt . . höchste Lust! . .

Kroplik couldn’t go on waiting for him to expire. ‘Well mine was Scannláin. Son of the Scannláins of Ludgvennok. And had been for two thousand bloody years. And then for a crime we didn’t commit, and not for any of the thousands we did. . that’s the galling part—’

‘For a crime no one committed,’ Gutkind interjected.

Densdell Kroplik was past caring whether a crime had been committed or not. He held out his glass for another whisky. The high life — downing whisky in St Eber at 11.30 in the morning. The gods drinking to their exemption from the petty cares of mortals. Atop Valhalla, dust or no dust.

Gutkind sploshed whisky into Kroplik’s glass. He wanted him drunk and silent. He wanted him a thing of ears. Other than his cat, Eugene Gutkind had no one to talk to. His wife had left him. He had few friends in the force and no friends in St Eber. Who in St Eber did have friends? A few brawling mates and a headless wife to curse comprised happiness in St Eber, and he no longer even had the wife. So he rarely got the opportunity to pour out his heart. A detective inspector, anyway, had to measure his words. But he didn’t have to measure anything with Densdell Kroplik, least of all whisky. He wasn’t a kindred spirit. Wagner didn’t make him a kindred spirit. To Gutkind’s eye Kroplik lacked discrimination. Not knowing where to pin the blame he pinned it on everyone. A bad hater, if ever he saw one. A man lacking specificity. But he was still the nearest thing to a kindred spirit there was. ‘Drink,’ he said. ‘Drink to what we believe and know to be true.’

And when Densdell Kroplik was drunk enough not to hear what was being said to him, true or not true, and not to care either way, when he was half asleep on the couch with the icing-sugar cat sitting on his face, Detective Inspector Eugene Gutkind began his exposition. .

There had been no crime. No Götterdämmerung anyway. No last encounter with the forces of evil, no burning, and no renewal of the world. Those who should have perished had been forewarned by men of tender conscience like Clarence Worthing who, though he longed to wipe the slate clean, could not betray the memory of his fragrant encounter with Ottilie or Naomi or Lieselotte, in the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. For what you have done to me, I wish you in hell, they said. But for what you have done to me I also wish you to be spared. Such are the contradictions that enter the hearts of men who know what it is to love and not be loved in return. The irony of it was not lost on Detective Inspector Gutkind. They owed their lives to a conspiracy of the inconsolable and the snubbed, these Ottilies and Lieselottes who had imbibed conspiracy with their mothers’ milk. They’d escaped betrayal, they who betrayed as soon as snap a finger.