Adam Thirlwell - The Escape

— Judge you? said the Head of the Committee. What else do you expect?

Once more Haffner fought against the prejudices of the ages.

After all, insinuated the Head of the Committee, it had taken him a very long time, no? To bring this suit? When it didn't seem so difficult. Haffner conceded this point. Perhaps he now thought there was money in it, said the Head of the Committee. Given his backdrop. To which Haffner replied that he didn't understand. Did he mean his British backdrop? Background?

— No, said the Head of the Committee.

But, he added, it was obvious that he was not from Britain. Haffner asked him what he meant. One only needed to look, said the Head of the Committee. Just one's eyes.

He understood. Yes, Haffner understood. Blond and blue-eyed among the Jews: and Jewish to everyone else. But just because he understood didn't mean he wasn't bewildered. Haffner wasn't used to fighting the prejudices of Central Europe. He had grown up happily in the pleasures of north London. He wasn't used to regarding himself as part of a race, rather than a nation. He was just a Haffner, not a Jewish Haffner. As he had tried to tell his driver, on their way from Haifa to Cairo — but that was another story. As he continued to try to tell various taxi drivers and financial wives, in London and New York. The cricketing taxi drivers of New York and the intellectual financial wives of London. The pattern of it, perhaps, should have made him pause. But Haffner rarely paused.

Just as he should perhaps have paused on the fact that he still possessed a News Letter to the Forces , dated Chanukah 5705, which he kept, he always said, not for its ethical stance but because on the back of this sheet of paper were adverts for Elco watches, from Hatton Garden; the Grodzinski chain of modern bakeries; and Lloyd Rakusen's Delicious Wheaten Crackers. He went for its nostalgia, maintained Haffner. He did not preserve it because this newsletter announced the triple burden of the continuing fight against the menace of Fascism and Nazism, the effort to rescue as many as they could of the remnants of their brethren left in Europe, and the refusal to relinquish one iota of their just claims to Eretz Israel as the Land of Israel belonging to the People of Israel. But I am not so sure. Maybe Haffner had never quite resolved the problem of his loyalties.

Was he saying, said Haffner, pounding the desk, like the grandest businessman of all time, that this Committee was refusing to help him because he and his wife were Jewish? Was that the missing word? And as he did so he believed that surely now this man would retreat: surely this man would not have the temerity to disagree with Haffner. But no, even now this man preserved his calm. Of course, he said, he had not said that. He was merely observing.

But Haffner was unbowed. As Benjamin glowed with mortified pride beside him, Haffner gave a speech. He was noted for his speeches, and Haffner gave the speech that he had always dreamed of making: where the audience quails beneath the shaking fist, the pointing finger; where the righteous man can demand of the wicked man that the truth be finally told.

— These are the things you always say, said the Head of the Committee. That everyone is against you.

— Me? said Haffner. I just met you.

— Not just you, he said. All of you. That you are always prosecuted.

— Persecuted, corrected Haffner, haughty.

The secretaries, Haffner fancied, were crowding at the door. One, perhaps, was being hoisted by a sturdy palm to the rim of the door, where a crack allowed the earnest spectator to get a glimpse of Haffner in his finale: rising now, pushing back his chair, and demanding that the Head of the Committee offer him an explanation.

— Let me put a question for you, said the Head of the Committee. You think you have nothing to do with us? You think you can take what you want?

Haffner wondered what he was asking him. Was he now to take on the guilt of the entire Soviet empire? Because he and his wife were Jewish? Were the very Communists who had stolen his wife's home now to be seen as Haffner's fault?

This was Haffner's twentieth century — where the history of London was also the history of Warsaw; and the history of Tel Aviv was also the history of Paris. And so on, and so on: in the endless history of the geography. All the separate national histories were universal, if you looked from far enough away. So how could Haffner escape?

The Head of the Committee motioned to a man who was no doubt an assistant, an apparatchik — who had been sitting in the shadows of this vast room all along — to show these gentlemen out. He was sorry, but he really must cut short their appointment. Naturally, he said, a decision would come in due course.

Unexpectedly, as he rose passionate from his chair, Haffner discovered that he was leaving with a sense of triumph. A sense of triumph accompanied by a worry that he had rather lost the upper hand, by making such a scene — but a triumph, nevertheless, that he had been so free with his fury. He had reached a place of poetry.

He was hoping so much, thought Haffner, that Livia was watching. He had never believed in ghosts before. They had seemed gothically unnecessary. But now they seemed the only just solution to the difficult problem of death.

For Haffner was furious with loyalty. His history was Livia's too. He couldn't deny it. He had thought for so long that this villa was just a chore. And it was a chore. But it meant more to him than that. It was suddenly, he understood, all to do with Livia.

And Livia, he thought, would appreciate this fight for her cosmopolitan history. She would appreciate, above all, Haffner's un-orthodox methods. For, as he confided to an astonished and worried Benjamin, he had another plan as well. To Benjamin he offered an edited version of his conversation with Niko. He perhaps exaggerated Niko's authority. He did not mention the locale where he had conducted these negotiations. But Benjamin still protested. Was he going to do something so illegal? No, Benji couldn't believe it. He mustn't do anything of the sort.

They paused outside the entrace to a jazz cafe in a garden — its walls graffiti'd with red and black unicorns: the arpeggios scaling the heights of the trees. They considered it; they walked on.

Maybe all of Benjamin's anxiety was his fault, thought Haffner. Maybe this was the natural consequence of Haffner: he had bequeathed accidentally to his grandson this exorbitant need for rules. In Benji's wish to be the opposite of his grandfather. Walking towards the hotel with Benjamin — as, still feeling exhausted, after two dramatic nights, Haffner dreamed of a possible nap, since exhaustion was becoming his natural state — he wondered if it was somehow in opposition to the ghost of Haffner that Benji had inherited this absolute anxiety about the feelings of others: a total timidity.

And it seemed that Haffner was right.

Only when they reached the doors to the hotel did Benjamin finally begin to talk about the fact that Benji was now in love. Yes, he said, he had met a girl whose gorgeousness transcended everything of which Benji had thought the world capable. But, wondered Benji, could he really know she liked him?

— Have you kissed this girl? said Haffner.

That wasn't the question, said Benjamin. The question was: did she want him to do this again? She seemed so cool. It was, said Haffner, an easy question to answer. He should simply see what happened next. He should kiss her again. What harm could that do? And Benjamin replied that, well, he just didn't know how much he wanted the burden of it. He didn't know if he wanted the relationship. And if he didn't want that, then he thought it was better to do nothing.