Howard Jacobson - Shylock Is My Name

“Then I and my co-signatory will proceed to the clinic as agreed,” Strulovitch said.

Shylock bowed to him. He seemed to expect nothing else.

But Strulovitch wanted a quiet word before leaving. “Was it for this, then, that you came?” he asked in his lowest voice. What business remained between them was theirs alone.

“I’d prefer to think,” Shylock replied in kind, “that this was why you found me.”

Strulovitch swam in the unexpected blue of Shylock’s eyes. When had they changed colour?

“Who did the finding and who the being found is not a matter that will easily be settled between us.”

“No.”

“I too admired your performance.”

“You weren’t listening.”

“I got the gist of it.”

Shylock lowered his head. His hair was thinner than Strulovitch had noticed before, but then he had not seen him without his hat. A sentimentalist when it came to men — especially to fathers — he was half-inclined to kiss Shylock where the hair was thinnest.

Shylock read his mind. “I am not in search of a son,” he said.

“And I have had my fill of fathers,” Strulovitch said. “I hope I can admire your theatricality for itself. But you couldn’t really have believed that it would sway me.”

Shylock laughed. A shy catch of the breath. When had he started to laugh? “Not for a moment,” he said. “Affecting your resolution was the last thing on my mind. Not everything is about you.”

—

When Strulovitch swept out of Plurabelle’s drive with D’Anton at his shoulder, Plurabelle did not even see them go. She had eyes only for Shylock. God, I love this man, she thought. I fucking love him.

She was glad Barney was not here. It had been inspired of her to get rid of him though she hadn’t really known why she’d done it at the time. Now she could only hope he’d lost his way and would never come back. Let him stay in Chester Zoo.

She approached the new man in her life and laid a hand on his arm, surprised by how hard it felt. “That was awe-inspiring,” she said.

Shylock’s eyes had reverted to their gunmetal grey. “But it didn’t work,” he said. “Mercy has not been shown.”

“Oh, that needn’t matter.”

“Needn’t it?”

“How do we ever measure what works anyway,” she said, looking up at him with her swollen lips. “I can only tell you that it worked for me.”

“I’m pleased to hear that. To whom are you showing mercy?”

“I will show it you if you wish me to.”

“I am not in need of it.”

“What are you in need of?”

He paused, as though expecting something else. “And?” he said.

She was disconcerted. “I don’t understand.”

“I am waiting for what follows. Don’t you usually have a riddle for those you think want something from you?”

She shook her hair as though wishing to rid her head of what he’d just said. “I have no riddle for you,” she said. “With you, I feel at last that I can be direct. I know there is nothing you want. But is there anything I can give you?”

He wondered if she was about to offer to make him famous. I am too old for this, he thought. “Peace and quiet,” he said. “Peace and quiet are all I am in need of.”

She took that to be further encouragement. Peace and quiet she could give him. “You are not what I thought you were,” she persisted.

“And what did you think I was?”

“I don’t know, but I would never have imagined…” Whatever it was she would never have imagined she couldn’t for the moment find the words for it.

Shylock helped her out. “That a Jew could be so Christian?”

She felt that he almost spat the words at her.

“No, no, that wasn’t what I intended to say. What I mean is that you looked so forbidding when you opened the door to me at Simon Strulovitch’s I didn’t dream you could be capable of such humanity.”

“That’s just another way of saying the same thing. You saw a Jew and expected nothing of him but cruelty.”

“I didn’t see a Jew . I don’t go around seeing Jews .”

“All right — you saw cruelty and gave it a Jewish face.”

“I’m only saying you are not what you seem. I am not a Christian. I haven’t been to church since I was a little girl. But I know what Christian sentiments are. Is it so wrong to be surprised by the eloquent expression of sentiments one normally hears from the pulpit by a man who scowls?”

“You mean a Jew who scowls.”

“I mean what I say I mean.”

“Then I will answer you in that spirit. Yes, it is wrong to be surprised. It is wrong not to know where you got your sweet Christian sentiments from. It is morally and historically wrong not to know that Jesus was a Jewish thinker and that when you quote him against us you are talking vicious nonsense. Charity is a Jewish concept. So is mercy. You took them from us, that is all. You appropriated them. They were given freely, but still you had to steal them.”

“I?”

“It shocks you to exemplify? It must. It shocked me. I was made to crawl for what I exemplified. So yes, you . You say my humanity surprises you. What was it you expected? And whose humanity is it that you think you see in me now? Your own! How dare you think you can teach me what I already know, or set me the example I long ago set you? It is a breathtaking insolence, an immemorial act of theft from which nothing but sorrow has ever flowed. There is blood on your insolence.”

Plurabelle looked as though she were about to cry. She put a hand on her chest. “I feel you’ve laid a curse on me,” she said.

“Well now you know the sensation from the other end,” Shylock said.

And this time Plurabelle could have sworn he did spit on her.

—

“That’s what you call telling them,” Leah said.

Shylock pulled his coat around him. “It was not without a long premeditation,” he admitted.

“It was none the worse for that,” she said.

“A long premeditation invites anticlimax,” he said. “One can think too long. What I said was musty. It could have been better.”

“It was good enough.”

“Is that all?”

“Good enough is good enough. You don’t, I hope, think you are going to change history.”

“I can hope.”

“You’d be unwise to do so.”

“You wish then that I’d stayed silent?”

“I haven’t said that. Though I wish you’d shown a little of your rachmones to that poor girl.”

“Ach, I wouldn’t worry for her. She fucking loves me.”

“Then maybe I should worry for you.”

“I think you’re safe. She’s the wrong persuasion.”

—

He didn’t go immediately, but stood in the snow enjoying her proximity.

Some days were harder than others. Today he would have liked to feel her arms around him. There was quiet between them, as though each were waiting for some word from the other. At last it was she who spoke.

“Caring about the right or wrong persuasion has not done us any good,” she said.

“It’s not only our doing,” he reminded her.

“No, it’s not. But it’s us I’m talking about. You and me and Jessica.”

“Oh, Jessica will be fine.”

But he read from the long echoing silence that ensued, that she knew, after all, that Jessica was not and never would be fine.

So had Leah all this time been concealing what she knew from him, just as he had all this time been concealing what he knew from her? Did she know what he’d have given the world for her never to find out, that their daughter had betrayed them, betrayed the love they’d borne each other, betrayed her upbringing and betrayed her own honour, for someone, for something — describe it how one would — of no worth?