Adam Thirlwell - The Escape

Haffner had no sympathy for the manias of the twentieth century. The grand era of decolonisation; the century of splinter groups. All the crazed ethnicity. Was this such a triumph for the human spirit? It seemed to Haffner that it was a distinct defeat. All Haffner wanted was the conservative; the inherited; the right.

But the twentieth century was all he had.

And at this point I must describe a final loop in this aspect of Haffner's character. He disliked the burden of a tragic heritage. He wished to live in a world free of this kind of inherited loyalty. But if anyone else, who was not Jewish, tried to agree with Haffner, he rebelled. No one else, he thought, had the right to criticise.

This was one of the marks of Haffner. Disloyal among his friends; and loyal among his enemies.

And so once more, in his exile, against his instincts, Haffner was becoming more Jewish than he wanted to be. Hyper-English among the Jews, this was Haffner — the blond and blue-eyed boy. But Jewish with everyone else.

As he prepared to defend his people, to argue the case of his embattled race, in a trance of passionate and unnecessary boredom, Haffner's phone rang. Hopefully, he looked at it, wishing for a respite from the history of Europe. For a brief moment, before remembering that this was impossible, he imagined it might be Zinka. But it was Europe all over again.

Once more, he heard the voice of Benjamin: the disappointment of Haffner's old age: as Haffner was the disappointment of Benjamin's youth.

— Poppa, said a voice which emanated from a payphone in some Tel Aviv hall of residence.

The recent mystery of Benjamin still confused Haffner. Each time Benji called, he said he wouldn't call again. And then he called again. And maybe if Haffner had only paused to consider this, then he might have seen the mute obviousness of Benjamin's behaviour: the slapstick of his reticence. He might have seen that Benjamin was in a crisis of his own. But Haffner was rarely good at that kind of thinking. He tended to believe that everyone said what they wanted. Just as, he maintained, he always said what he wanted. So it did not occur to him to wonder whether Benjamin might have more personal reasons for calling Haffner, the family's legendary immoralist. No, he did not imagine, for instance, ensconced as he was in his own romantic crisis, that Benjamin could be in a romantic crisis as well. Since Haffner never chose to believe in his own mysteries, why should he be forced to believe in the mysteries of others?

— Call me back, said Haffner, swiftly. I'm busy.

The voice of Benjamin swooned into silence.

And Haffner, in the unexpected glory of his triumph in so peremptorily dismissing Benjamin, returned to Isabella. He couldn't understand it. Yes, let him change the conversation for just one moment. He had now been to this office four, perhaps five times. And no one seemed interested. Did they realise they had a legal duty? Had they no respect for the law?

Isabella replied that there was no reason to raise his voice.

He demanded that they stop this conversation, he said to Isabella, and that they go back in. She would smoke one final cigarette, said Isabella. And Haffner loped away: to fume.

This pause lasted for as long as Haffner could contain himself, while staring at Isabella, angrily, with Isabella staring back. The pause, therefore, was short. He walked over to her again.

Why, he enquired, did she have to care so much about the past? It wasn't difficult, after all — remembering the past. It hardly needed to be an obligation.

You didn't need to remind Haffner about remembrance. He couldn't help it. So many of the atrocities were his. But why then should Haffner remember them? What use was the guilt? Since when, he asked Isabella, was suffering the criterion of a life? Why not the charm? Why not the fun?

— This country! sighed Isabella.

The smoke on her cigarette, noted Haffner, listlessly, was being redundantly echoed by its imperfect twin, the smoke from a distant chimney.

What kind of civilisation was it, she asked Haffner — who had no answer, just as he so rarely had answers to the absolute questions — where a girl was scared to go to church? Where a girl was told never to tell her friends that her family went to church? Because if they heard about it, they would send her family away. What kind of civilisation? This was reality, she said. This was real.

Could he have a cigarette? he asked. Moodily, Isabella extracted one. She lit it behind Haffner's hand. He inhaled: and felt sick.

It was the first cigarette he had smoked for twenty years. That seemed right. Smiling, therefore, in this moment of complicity, Haffner tried to create a truce.

Isabella pressed her cigarette out against the wall with her thumb: the butt bent. They went back into the cool of the building, and its humidified air.

This time, Haffner received a new answer.

There was, they had ascertained, a problem which no one had quite anticipated. He had not given them all the information required. Haffner paused them here. He could assure them, he said, that all the necessary information had been supplied, on more than one occasion. Perhaps, they said. But they needed to be sure. And Haffner was then asked where his wife had been born. He replied that he had given them this information already. Nevertheless, they said. Nevertheless what? said Haffner to Isabella, who declined to reply or to translate. If he gave this information again, thought Haffner, he gave it only to show how generous he could be. He wasn't one to bear grudges.

It turned out that, as they had feared, they could not help him at all.

His wife, you see, said Isabella, his late wife was a citizen not of this country but of Italy. He understood? So it was very difficult. They understood. But it was very difficult.

He had come, he pointed out, a very long way. They appreciated this, said Isabella, but their hands were tied. It was a problem of citizenship.

Were they serious? said Haffner. Isabella replied that absolutely. She was very sorry, she added. These were the ways of the world.

But did they understand, Haffner wondered, that the question of ownership was completely separate from whatever problem of citizenship they wanted to invent?

Isabella asked him to slow down. Could he please repeat himself?

Haffner, in his fury, awkwardly leaned into the guichet: an avenging, unsteady god.

He had no intention, he announced, of repeating himself to these people. He had had enough.

— Everyone is very sorry, said Isabella.

— It's not happening today? Haffner asked her.

— Today, no. I do not think so, she said.

— I just wanted to know, said Haffner, coldly.

As the gambler who plays cards, knowing they are rigged — the deal-box with its top-sight-tell, the coffee mill, the loaded dice — yet still believing in the efficacy of his luck, so Haffner confronted the miniature conflicts which the century placed in his path. That one had lost before the game had started was no reason not to play. And after all: surely he was still owed one great win: one absolute and effervescent triumph? He believed in it as other people believed in the more likely cascade of the slot machines: a parallel line of green apples, with jaunty stems.

— I am so sorry, said Isabella: melancholy for all the exiled and dispossessed.

Haffner only wanted a triumph. This was true. In the full panoply of his Jewishness, he had now experienced a moment of conversion. He wasn't doing this for Esther. Now, he was going to recover this villa in a gesture of piety. Yes, Haffner's triumph now consisted in his vision of the villa. And he knew his record when it came to obtaining triumphs. They proved, so often, beyond Haffner's talent. But Haffner, thought Haffner, was ready for the fight.