Howard Jacobson - J

So WHAT HAPPENED, in his view, was that NOT MUCH HAD. They had got out. Crept away like rats in the dark. That was not just supposition based on his cracking Clarence Worthing’s code. It was demonstrable fact. If there’d been a massacre where were the bodies? Where were the pits, where the evidence of funeral pyres and gallows trees, where the photographs or other recorded proof of burned-out houses, streets, entire suburbs? Believe the figures that had once been irresponsibly bandied about and the air should still be stinking with the destruction. They say you can smell extinction for centuries afterwards. Go to the Somme. You can see it in the soil. You can taste it in the potatoes.

He had done the maths, worked it out algebraically, done the measurements geometrically, consulted log tables — so many people killed in so many weeks in so many square metres. . by whom? It would have taken half the population up in arms, and mightily skilled in the use of them, to have wreaked such destruction in so brief a period of time. No, there had been no Götterdämmerung .

He takes a swig from the bottle and looks at Kroplik with his head thrown back, his mouth open and his legs spread. What the hell is that inside his trousers? He regrets inviting him over. He is ashamed of his own loneliness. But there is so much to say, and no one to say it to.

He feels subtler than any man he knows. No Götterdämmerung does not mean, you fool, that there was no anything. First law of criminal investigation: everyone exaggerates. Second law of criminal investigation: just because everyone exaggerates doesn’t mean there’s nothing to investigate. In my profession, Mr Kroplik, we don’t say there is no smoke without fire. Rumour is also a crime. False accusation — you can go down for that. But that said, there is always a fire. Somewhere, something is forever burning. That’s why no accusation is ever entirely wasted. Eventually we will find a culprit for any crime. So yes, WHAT HAPPENED happened in that there was minor disturbance and insignificant destruction. To win another of their propaganda wars they did what they had done for centuries and put on another of their pantomimes of persecution. Allowed the spilling of a little blood to justify their disappearing, while no one was looking, with their accumulated loot. A sacrificial people, my great-grandfather called them, and as one of their sacrifices himself, he knew. But they also sacrifice their own. There’s a name for it but I’ve forgotten it. You’ll probably know it, Kroplik, you unedifying piss-ant. Like a caste system. You probably didn’t know they had a caste system, but my word they did. This one can’t light a candle, that one can’t go near a body. Some can’t even touch a woman unless they’re wearing surgical gloves. And some know it’s their job to die when the time comes. It’s not as unselfish as it sounds. Their children get looked after and they go straight to heaven. Not to lie with virgins, that’s someone else. This lot go straight to heaven and read books. For the honour of which they put themselves in the way of trouble, announce themselves in the street by what they wear, hang identifying objects in the windows of their houses where they wait patiently to be burned alive. Here! Over here!

The shouting doesn’t wake Kroplik who sleeps like the dead.

I, my rat-arsed friend, Gutkind continues, am a policeman. I know the difference between right and wrong. Wrong is burning someone alive in his own house, I don’t care if he invited you in and handed you the box of matches. You can always say no. Sure, you were provoked. Criminals are always provoked. An open door, a short dress, a handbag left unzipped. Don’t get me wrong — I sympathise. I’m not beyond a provocation or two myself. Right this minute I’m provoked into violent thoughts by the sight of you snoring on my sofa. But I restrain myself from cutting off your balls. That’s what makes me not a villain.

But keep wrongdoing in proportion is another of my mottos. Not everything is the greatest crime in history.

He rubs his face and drinks.

No sir!

And drinks some more.

You’ll have your own favourite greatest crime in history, Mr Historian of the Gods of Ludgvennok, but I can tell you this wasn’t it. And why wasn’t it?

Because of this! He smites his heart.

Would he have done what Clarence Worthing did had he been in his position? Would he have assisted in their escape? Tears flood his eyes. The sublime music swells in his ears. . ertrinken . . versinken . . unbewußt . . höchste Lust !. . Yes, he and Clarence Worthing are one, made weak and strong by love.

Finishing off what is left in the bottle, he rejoins Densdell Kroplik on the couch where, exhausted by the intensity of his own emotion, he falls immediately asleep on Kroplik’s shoulder, the convulsing cat, heaving up fur balls coated in clay dust, between them.

It’s only a shame no family photographer is in attendance.

ii

It’s Kroplik who wakes first, still drunk. It takes him a moment or two to work out where he is. Though it’s only early afternoon it’s dark already in St Eber, the shabby pyramids of clay, as though each is lit from within by a small candle, the sole illumination.

Is this Egypt?

Then he notices that the cat has coughed up a puddle of china-clay slime on the lapel of his one smart suit. Or is it Gutkind’s doing? It smells as though it’s been in Gutkind’s stomach. Kroplik clutches his own. He lives on a daily diet of indignity but this is one insult he doesn’t have to bear. He has brought his razor along to give the detective inspector a close shave as a token of his friendship and regard. But he is too angry to be a friend. Slime! From Gutkind’s poisoned gut! On his one good suit!

He is aware that Gutkind has been ranting at him while he slept. The usual subject — villainy. Was he telling him he knew — teasing him, taunting him with his knowledge. I know the difference between right and wrong Kroplik is sure he heard him say through his stupor. Provocation is no defence. This time. .

Is this why he was invited over?

It amazes him that Gutkind should have the brains to solve a crime. Yes, he’d as good as laid it out for him a hundred times, but Gutkind had struck him as too dumb to see what was in front of his face.

I’ve underestimated him, Kroplik decides. I’ve fatally underestimated the cunt. And laughs appreciatively at his own choice of words. Make a good final chapter heading for the next volume of his history — no, not ‘The Cunt’, but ‘A Fatal Underestimation’.

He thinks about taking out his razor, putting it to Gutkind’s throat, and confessing. What would the policeman do then? Throw up some more? Then he has a better idea. He staggers to his feet and closes the curtains. I’ll just cut his throat and have done, he has decided.

But it’s the cat that gets it first.

i

ESME NUSSBAUM LAY in what the doctors called a coma for two months after the motorcyclist rode the pavement and knocked her down. To her it was a long and much-needed sleep. A chance to think things over without interruption. Regain perspective. And maybe lose a little weight.

She wasn’t joking about the weight. She was done with looking comfortable and unthreatening. It was time to show more bone. Splintered bone, she laughed to herself, causing the screen to bleep, though she didn’t doubt the bone would mend eventually. It wasn’t that she’d been incapable of causing discomfort when discomfort needed to be caused. She was known to be a woman who sometimes asked troublesome questions. But there’d been no real spike inside her. She could annoy without quite inspiring fear. Now she fancied being someone else. No, now she was someone else. Someone with sharper edges, all spikes. Broken, she was more frightening.