Howard Jacobson - Shylock Is My Name

On Alderley Edge, the snow had begun to fall more heavily. Pretty, if you were in the mood. “Won’t it be a bit cold for that?” Strulovitch asked. “For D’Anton, I mean.”

“There will be a marquee. I’d be surprised if it isn’t heated.”

“Are you saying, since you’ve appointed yourself my event-planner, that they’re prepared for the procedure to be witnessed by the guests?”

“That depends on your definition of ‘procedure.’ If you mean the public settling of an argument — the denouement, so to speak, the just distribution of honours and deserts, the mortification of the guilty and the exoneration of the innocent, or vice versa: vice versa being the more usual way of it in my experience — yes. If you mean the removal of D’Anton’s foreskin, I doubt very much that D’Anton would consent to undergoing that before an audience. They are talking of a clinic.”

“The snivelling coward,” Strulovitch said, which was tantamount to an acceptance of Plurabelle’s munificence in all other regards.

It is one of those better-to-be-dead-than-alive mornings you get in the north of England in winter, though the absence of light is more markedly felt in the Golden Triangle of Wilmslow, Mottram St. Andrew and Alderley Edge on account of the sadness that prevails there in all weathers.

Sadness is among the tools which those who would live nobly employ to distance themselves from the farcicality of existence engulfing everyone else. The unfairness, the banality, the repetition of cruelty. That some are delivered to far grander sorrows than these is proved by their sadness.

As it happens, it is also one of those mornings when a person neither sad nor hopeful might feel that the sun could yet show itself. Not this day, and not even the next, but in the weeks or months to come.

Plurabelle wished they’d waited. Her gardens would not look their best until spring arrived. But she was at the mercy of Strulovitch’s impatience. And D’Anton’s, come to that. And for herself, too, she knew that the sooner this was settled the better.

“Up,” she said to Barnaby who believed that Sundays were for lying in bed. Indeed, as a man who’d only ever had to look presentable for a living, Barnaby believed that most mornings were for lying in bed, and since his curly head looked so pretty on her pillow Plurabelle was usually content to indulge him. But today was different. “There is something in particular I’m going to want from you,” she told him. “Can you guess what it is?”

Barnaby felt tested to within an inch of his life. He doubted he had an answer to any question left in him, or that he could find within himself a single further proof of his devotion. D’Anton had still not succeeded in getting him the Solomon J. Solomon sketch that would show Plury how much and how unconventionally he valued her, but at least he’d found Barnaby a ring much like the one Barnaby had lost. So it couldn’t be that that she wanted from him. And they’d made love sweetly the night before, so it couldn’t be that either.

“A clue wouldn’t go amiss,” Barnaby said, knowing that theirs was a multiple-choice relationship and that, as always, she would give him three.

“It’s about today,” Plury helped him. “A very important day, as you know.”

Barnaby sat up on one elbow and turned his profile to her. That usually helped him out of trouble. “You either want me to welcome guests at the gate,” he guessed, “go around with the raffle tickets, or dress D’Anton’s wounds and I’m not going to do that.”

Plury shook her head. “You can make yourself scarce for the day,” she told him, “or you can make yourself scarce for the day, or you can make yourself scarce for the day.”

Barnaby, being boyish, wondered if there was a fourth option.

“You can make yourself scarce for the day,” Plury said, kissing him.

“Is this because you fear I will faint at the sight of blood?”

“No, it is because I fear my women friends will faint at the sight of you.”

“I know,” said Barnaby, “that that isn’t the real reason you want me out of the way.”

“And you are right. The real reason I want you out of the way is that your very presence is suggestive of sexual pleasure. You are so young and so beautiful and so indolent that no one will believe we devote ourselves to anything here but indulgence of the flesh. That is not the impression I want to give, today of all days. I was sad before I met you and it will better serve our cause — yours, mine and D’Anton’s — for me to look sad again.”

“Very well,” said Barnaby, pleased she hadn’t mentioned Gratan, “I will drive to Chester Zoo.”

Plurabelle could tell he was hurt. But this was a day for sacrifices.

—

Strulovitch and Shylock had also risen early.

Strulovitch tried on a number of suits, all of them black, and spent much of the morning at the mirror. How do you dress for such an occasion?

At last he sought Shylock’s advice.

“Taking one thing with another,” he asked, “which of these three ties strikes you as the most appropriate?”

He was reminded of his marriage mornings. The same intestinal tumult. The same wondering if he was looking forward to the day’s events or dreading them.

“As a rule you don’t wear a tie,” Shylock said.

“No, but I think today calls for one.”

“Then any but the red,” Shylock said.

“I am assuming,” Strulovitch mused aloud, “that you will not be making any changes to your wardrobe yourself.”

Nothing moved on Shylock’s face. “There is, though,” he replied, “the question of the hat.”

“I was guessing you would wear it.”

“The point is not what you were guessing but whether I ought to wear it.”

“You are more threatening in it.”

“Meaning I shouldn’t wear it?”

“No, meaning you should.”

Shylock looked at himself in the mirror. He too was nervous and reminded of an earlier time.

—

The final plans, hammered out by persons better suited than the principals to putting their minds to such things, were these:

The two men would be driven by Strulovitch’s chauffeur Brendan to the Old Belfry where there would be a small champagne reception at which, if Gratan and Beatrice had not returned to face the music — Plurabelle had booked a string quartet just in case — Strulovitch and D’Anton would have a final conversation, confirm terms in front of witnesses chosen for their discretion, and then be transported in a limousine belonging to neither party to a private walk-in circumcision clinic in Stockport for surgery — a preliminary check of D’Anton’s physical and psychological fitness for such an operation, minor as it was, having taken place at the clinic several days before. Strulovitch would see D’Anton across the threshold (and hang about a while outside to be certain he didn’t make a run for it) and then return to the party. In due course — the procedure itself, barring complications, not being lengthy — news of its verified completion would be relayed to the Old Belfry, Strulovitch would sign papers to the effect that no further action would be taken against Gratan, no further restraints placed on Beatrice, and no further word spoken against the good names of Plurabelle and D’Anton. The latter would remain in the clinic for as long as necessary, receiving the best care that Stockport had to offer, and Strulovitch would take his leave satisfied. How much champagne he drank would of course be up to him. Ditto the making of a speech.

—

“As best man you might want to say a few words yourself,” Strulovitch said to Shylock.