Howard Jacobson - The Very Model Of A Man

He looked uncomfortable. Already this was, by his standards, a searching and protracted conversation.

You’re the clever one, he said.

I waited.

You’re the clever one — so you tell me…

What?

He sighed. All these demands! You were the one, he reminded me, who said they were down there talking.

I couldn’t deny it. Well?

I had stolen his question. Well? he echoed, angrily. Well?

As I had to find another word, I resorted to ‘What?’ again.

Well what, he almost shouted, are they down there talking about?

After the pains it had cost him finally to get it out, I could hardly declare myself shocked by him. I was in no position to affect the air of one superior to low curiosity, or to try arguing that he had forced his confidences on me. But I was shaken to hear the question put so bluntly, and that must have made some difference to the quality of my answer.

What were they talking about? How was I to know! The weather? Soil? Babies?

Anybody listening — not that there was anybody listening — would have supposed I was the one who was against conversation.

My father shook his head. Now that the subject was in the open, it was plain he had been thinking about it from all angles. I don’t believe those are the sorts of talks they have, he said.

They’ll be addressing weightier issues, you imagine?

He took his time to answer, screwing up one eye to aid concentration. His eyebrows were overgrown, making it difficult for him to see. I remembered that my mother used to trim them for him, laughing about how hairy he had become, and what would happen if the flake of flint she was wielding missed its mark. Ouch! he used to say, the joke being that that was the noise she would make, not he.

The thing is, he finally replied, I can’t imagine them talking to each other at all. When I think of your mother talking, I hear her talking only to me.

I looked away. And was proud of myself for not saying, And when I think of my mother talking I hear her talking only to me.

What about when you think of Him? I asked instead.

That’s just it, he said, tapping that corner of his skull wherein all this epic conceptualising, or all this epic failure to conceptualise, was taking place — that’s just it, I can’t. Threats and promises are all I can hear. Threats and promises and then off, in a black grumbling cloud, before there’s time for a reply.

Not easy company, certainly, I said.

He suddenly saw the funny side, clapping me about the shoulders and laughing his sizzling resin laugh. I could just see your mother taking that from me, he said.

I can’t see her taking it from Him, I returned. In which case you’ve got nothing to worry about. They probably don’t converse at all.

But you said –

I made a gesture disowning responsibility for idle chatter. It was just a manner of speaking, I explained.

But he was not as satisfied by this as I’d expected. Then in that case, he said –

I waited.

He stared up into the sun as if noticing it for the first time. A cloud in the shape of a hand passed across it. I think it’s time we went down, he said.

Then in that case what? I insisted.

If they don’t talk, then in that case, he retorted — and it really was a retort; truly he recoiled on me — what do they do?

That was the moment that taught me how much worse, that’s to say how much better, his condition was than mine; how many more were the compensations of jealousy fuelled by passion compared to those of envy fuelled by greed. I was fundamentally only covetous — forget the teat, I wanted primarily to be the miracle of recency my brother was — and covetousness lies cold, like your own corpse, beside you. My father, as I now perceived, was aflame with jealousy — he saw what did not happen, coined gruesome fictions out of the furnace of his brain; but what was that, if not a sort of increase? The jealous propagate. The envious suffer only slow depletion.

Jealous of his jealousy, I would willingly have leapt with him into the fires. Do? — I encouraged him. Do? What can they do?

You must mean, he said recklessly, what can’t they!

We were at a desperate pass: that moment of stasis when only cowards go back and only lunatics go on. We sat very still. For a time — this time — not at all mismatched. Although the sun was clouded and declining, the mountain seemed to be ablaze. We both had too much colour in our cheeks and we were both branded red around the eyes. The red that comes, not from weeping, but from fire-gazing.

That, I said slowly, would be an abomination. It is confusion, I reminded him.

He wanted me to be right. But of course he also wanted me to be wrong. Who can go on dining on the gruel of fact once they have tasted the rich meats of uncertainty?

By what law? he asked.

Is He not your Father, I said, and is she not your wife! And if a man lie with his daughter-in-law, both of them shall surely be put to death: they have wrought confusion; their blood shall be upon them.

Except, he reminded me, that He — Our Father — is not a man.

Did I dare? I dared. And if a woman approacheth unto any beast, and lie down thereto, thou shalt kill the woman, and the beast: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

I held back from appending my own commentary to the text. Narrowly, narrowly, I stopped myself adding, Kill the beast! Kill the beast!

Just as well. We all have to kill our own. It is a private matter. And as it was, fearing retribution for loose talk, my father had raised the hem of his robe to his lips, almost devouring it in fright. Y-H-W-H, he said, in a voice as low as he could make it, dropping vowels as though they were hot coals, Y-H-W-H m-st n-v-r b-c-ll-d b-st.

In that case, I said, if He is neither man nor beast, I do not see how, as man or beast, He can have wronged you.

He thought about it. All this took time. We had been given no guidance. Only a jumble of prohibitions. And you cannot construct much of a cosmology out of those.

Unless, I went on, you would argue that a wife can betray her husband with an Immanence?

How were we to know that that is what wives do all the time? Our terrors, in those days, were all tangible. We feared first and foremost through our eyes. So it made my father feel immediately better to see his Rival losing clarity, dismantling even as he watched. The more God receded to the realm of pure idea, the more my father saw himself reassembling into solid fact. For the first time since he had initiated the conversation his fists had become unclenched — one, two, three, four fingers and a thumb visible on one hand, and, yes, one, two, three, four fingers and a thumb visible on the other. Soon he would be making what was not himself vanish again.

But he was still red around the eyes. He had had a bad time of it, imagining God’s feet touching the ground, God’s arms…

And he was still without a wife. He said: Do you know what puzzles me now?

I tried to guess. What you were ever doing worrying about it?

No, he said. What she sees in Him since He can’t be seen.

I could have replied: It’s a puzzle what my mother sees in anyone! But I didn’t want to fan my resentments into life, just as we were putting out my father’s. Maybe she is impressed by what He can do, I ventured. Maybe He shows off His powers. Floods rivers for her. Drains bogs. Splits tamarisks with lightning. Invents wart-hogs. Changes the earth’s colour. Shaves slices off the moon and then makes it whole again.

My father’s eyes opened like moons themselves. Tricks! he said. What you’re saying is that He does tricks for her!

I laughed. Yes, I said. He does tricks. What else do you expect a God to do?