Howard Jacobson: Shylock Is My Name

It had been worse, then, for Leah than for him. Down there, in the cold of her interment, Leah lay day after day, without the consolation of confession or conversation, with her arms wound tight around their disgrace.

He thought his heart would break.

—

By the time Strulovitch returned to the Old Belfry to await public word of D’Anton’s operation Shylock was gone and of the friends of Plurabelle still dancing attendance on her none appeared to be of a mind to talk to him.

The little afternoon light there’d been was fading quickly. That suited Strulovitch. There was nothing he wanted to see. He dusted snow from a filigree bench far from the marquee and sat indifferent to the damp. He’d dropped D’Anton off at the clinic without looking at him or speaking to him. D’Anton had clearly wanted quiet himself after his altercation with Shylock. He shook a little, Strulovitch thought — though that might have been in fear of what awaited him. He recovered his spirits enough to say, “So this is it, then, over the top we go,” as he left the limousine, but Strulovitch had met that with silence. Why the victim should have been in a lighter mood than the executioner Strulovitch didn’t bother to enquire. Bluster, presumably. As it was bluster on his own part to say he hoped his adversary would die screaming under the knife. In fact he no longer cared what happened either way. Let D’Anton live, let D’Anton die — the outcome was immaterial to him. What would it change? It wouldn’t bring Beatrice back. It wouldn’t bring his wife back. It wouldn’t cook Gratan’s goose. And D’Anton would still be D’Anton when he was discharged. In all probability, and with some justice, more the Jew-hater than before.

He wondered if Shylock were feeling much what he felt right now. Knowing his words had all been for nothing. It wasn’t just that there was no victory to be had; it was that there was no victory worth having. Victory and defeat were alike absurd.

On it stretched, backwards and forwards, the line of risible time — all the way from the conversion of the Christians to the conversion of the Jews. And would the world be a better place if the one hadn’t happened and the other suddenly did? Beatrice with or without Gratan — what difference? The gallery he had failed to open in his parents’ name — so what? His ruined wife — did it matter to her what sort of world she lived in? Action had stopped arbitrarily for Shylock, but time hadn’t. Time had embalmed him. Would he have been better off had time ended for him when action did? Would he have effected anything less or anything more? The greatest illusion of all — that time would labour and bring forth beneficent change.

He didn’t know how long he sat there, but the chill had barely begun to spread through him when Plurabelle called out that she had news. Her voice had an unaccustomed crack in it, like a choirboy’s on the point of breaking. She looked shrunken and feverish. Knowing nothing of what had transpired between her and Shylock, Strulovitch took this to be the natural consequence of her fears for D’Anton. Good. If nothing else he had sown disquiet. And for a moment he hoped again his adversary had died screaming under the knife. But there was something not quite right about Plurabelle’s agitation. She had news, she said tragically. If the news was that D’Anton had died screaming under the knife, why was she taking so long to deliver it? Why the music-hall posturing — the badly executed stagger, the laboured breathing, the pale hand to the brow?

She’s hamming this, Strulovitch thought. She doesn’t want it to end. He could understand her looking forward to all being well again in her brittle little world, and Strulovitch with his threats and menaces being gone from it. But that didn’t explain the histrionics.

A small number of people were gathered in the marquee, hugging the heaters. “I have here a letter from the surgeon, dated, you might be surprised to learn, five days ago,” Plurabelle finally announced. Her voice was suddenly strong and vindictive and, as she read, her sorrowing eyes of moments before became points of unabated fire.

To whom it may concern,

I have today had the pleasure of examining this delightful patient (name supplied) with a view to judging his fitness to undergo circumcision by the “Forceps Guided Method” and am pleased to report that examination proved such a method, or indeed any method, supererogatory as the patient is already circumcised. The operation, as far as I can deduce and he recall, was performed when he was an infant, such procedures being common among families living in hot countries.

Needless to say one cannot circumcise a person twice.

Yours very sincerely,

Pandhari Malik

—

Was there laughter? Was there applause?

For the second time that afternoon, Strulovitch stopped his ears. If there is such a thing as hysterical deafness there is such a thing as rational deafness too. Why listen to what neither educates nor honours you? Why be demeaned by the unfolding of absurd predictability?

He didn’t have the patience — with events or with himself — to track back over the subterfuge that had made a fool of him. No one had acted with principle. He had lost, that was all that differentiated him from D’Anton. Winning — the prize a bloodied D’Anton — would not have made him the better man.

Surprised only by how little he was surprised, he slipped away before Plurabelle could confront him with his defeat. Let her exult without him. He had no further business at the Old Belfry and nothing to complain of. He was glad of it. To the modern mind there is a dignity in being tricked. It confirms the preposterousness of existence.

I am content, he thought. Obsolete, but content.

He did not immediately return home. He asked Brendan, whom he found in earnest conversation with other chauffeurs, to drive him round. Anywhere. On ungritted lanes, preferably. A whited landscape. High hedgerows and the quiet crunch of tyres on snow. Stay away until nightfall. And not long to wait for that. Here, night fell in the middle of the afternoon.

Before getting out and opening the door for Strulovitch, Brendan turned around and handed him a letter. “It’s my notice,” he said.

“I’ve been expecting it,” Strulovitch said. “I hope I haven’t been a trial to work for.”

“Sometimes one needs a change, sir,” Brendan said. “That is all.”

“You must do what your conscience determines, Brendan,” Strulovitch told him.

It gave him no pleasure to reflect that in the absence of fiends and devils to blame, Brendan’s conscience would be his scourge.

—

When he did finally get back he went straight to his desk where he scribbled a note to D’Anton. “To the victor the spoils,” he wrote. “As a mark of my good grace I will arrange for the Solomon Joseph Solomon to be delivered to your home. I trust the pleasure it gives the person for whom you say it is intended will be returned tenfold to you. You have a parched and withered look. May the sap of gratitude and reciprocated friendship rise in you. We were not put on earth to be forever sad.”

Before retiring, he called in on Kay and found Beatrice sitting with her. Neither woman made any demonstration of affection.

“When did you get back?” he asked Beatrice.

“Not long ago.”

“Are you well?”

She looked at her mother as though for confirmation. Was there a nod, a smile?

This is hard on her, Strulovitch thought — meaning everything. This is too cruel. She’s a child. “You look well,” he lied.

“I doubt that,” she said. “But thanks, anyway. I’m unharmed, if that’s what you mean. And unbetrothed, if that’s what you really want to know.”