Winman, Sarah: When God Was a Rabbit

He then opened the book he always carried and said, ‘Without a reason, why bother? Existence needs purpose: to be able to endure the pain of life with dignity; to give us a reason to continue. The meaning must enter our hearts, not our heads. We must understand the meaning of our suffering.’

I looked at his old hands, as dry as the pages he turned. He wasn’t looking at me but at the ceiling, as if his ideals were already heaven-bound. I had nothing to say and felt compelled to remain quiet, trapped by thoughts so hard to understand. My leg, however, soon started to itch; a small band of psoriasis, which had taken refuge under my sock, was becoming heated and raised, and I urgently needed to scratch it – slowly to start with – but then with a voracious vigour that dispelled the magic in the room.

Mr Golan looked at me, a little confused.

‘Where was I?’ he said.

I hesitated for a moment.

‘Suffering,’ I said quietly.

‘Don’t you see?’ I said later that evening, as my parents’ guests huddled silently around the fondue burner. The room fell silent, just the gentle gurgling of the Gruyère and Emmental mix and its fetid smell.

‘He who has a why to live for, can bear almost any how ,’ I said solemnly. ‘That’s Nietzsche ,’ I continued with emphasis.

‘You should be in bed, not wondering about death,’ said Mr Harris, who lived in number thirty-seven. He’d been in a bad mood since his wife left him the previous year, after her brief affair with (whispered) ‘another woman’.

‘I’d like to be Jewish,’ I pronounced, as Mr Harris dipped a large hunk of bread into the bubbling cheese.

‘We’ll talk about it in the morning,’ said my father, topping up the wine glasses.

My mother lay down with me on my bed, her perfume tumbling over my face like breath, her words smelling of Dubonnet and lemonade.

‘You said I could be anything I wanted when I was older,’ I said.

She smiled and said, ‘And you can be. But it’s not very easy to become Jewish.’

‘I know,’ I said forlornly. ‘I need a number.’

And she suddenly stopped smiling.

It had been a fine spring day, the day I actually asked him. I’d noticed it before, of course, because children would. We were in the garden and he rolled up his shirtsleeves and there it was.

‘What’s that?’ I said, pointing to the number on the thin translucent skin of his underarm.

‘That was once my identity,’ he said. ‘During the war. In a camp.’

‘What kind of camp?’ I asked.

‘Like a prison,’ he said.

‘Did you do something wrong?’ I said.

‘No, no,’ he said.

‘Why were you there, then?’ I asked.

‘Ahh,’ he said, raising his index finger in front of himself. ‘The big question. Why were we there? Why were we there indeed?’

I looked at him, waiting for the answer; but he gave none. And then I looked back at the number: six digits, standing out harsh and dark as if they had been written yesterday.

‘There’s only one story that comes out of a place like that,’ Mr Golan said quietly. ‘Horror and suffering. Not for your young ears.’

‘I’d like to know, though,’ I said. ‘I’d like to know about horror. And suffering.’

And Mr Golan closed his eyes and rested his hand on the numbers on his arm, as if they were the numbers to a safe and one he rarely opened.

‘Then I will tell you,’ he said. ‘Come closer. Sit here.’

My parents were in the garden fixing a birdhouse to the sturdy lower branch of the apple tree. I listened to their laughter, to their shrieks of command, to the ‘Higher’ ‘No, lower’ of clashing perspectives. Normally I would have been outside with them. It was a task that would have thrilled me once, the day being so fine. But I’d become quieter those last couple of weeks, gripped by an introversion that steered me towards books. I was on the sofa reading when my brother opened the door and leant awkwardly in the doorframe. He looked troubled; I could always tell because his silence was flimsy and craved the dislocation of noise.

‘What?’ I said, lowering my book.

‘Nothing,’ he said.

I picked up my book again and as soon as I did he said, ‘They’re going to cut my knob off, you know. Or part of it. It’s called a circumcision. That’s why I went to the hospital yesterday.’

‘What part?’ I asked.

‘Top bit,’ he said.

‘Will it hurt?’

‘Yeah, probably.’

‘Why are they going to do that, then?’

‘The skin’s too tight.’

‘Oh,’ I said, and must have looked confused.

‘Look,’ he said, a little more helpfully. ‘You know that blue roll-neck jumper you’ve got? The one that’s too small?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, you know when you tried to put your head through and you couldn’t and it got stuck?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, your head’s like my knob. They’ve got to cut off the skin – the roll-neck part – so the head can be free.’

‘And make a round neck?’ I said, sounding much clearer.

‘Sort of,’ he said.

He hobbled around for days, swearing and fiddling with the front of his trousers like the madman who lived in the park; the man we were told never to go near, but always did. He recoiled at my questions and my request for a viewing, but then one evening about ten days later, when the swelling had subsided and we were playing in my bedroom, I asked him what it was like.

‘Happy with it?’ I said, finishing the last of my Jaffa cake.

‘I think so,’ he said, trying to suppress a smile. ‘I look like Howard now. I have a Jewish penis.’

‘Just like Mr Golan’s penis,’ I said, lying back onto my pillow, unaware of the silence that had immediately filled the room.

‘How do you know about Mr Golan’s penis?’

A pale sheen now formed across his face. I heard him swallow. I sat up. Silence. The faint sound of a dog barking outside.

Silence.

‘How do you know?’ he asked again. ‘Tell me.’

My head pounded. I started to shake.

‘You mustn’t tell anyone,’ I said.

He stumbled out of my room and took with him a burden that, in reality, he was far too young to carry. But he took it nevertheless and told no one, as he had promised. And I would never know what actually happened when he left my room that night, not even later; he wouldn’t tell me. I just never saw Mr Golan again. Well, not alive, anyhow.

He found me under the covers, breathing in my nervous, cloying stench. I was fallen, confused, and I whispered, ‘He was my friend,’ but I couldn’t be sure if it was my voice any more, not now that I was different.

‘I’ll get you a proper friend,’ was all he said as he held me in the darkness, as defiant as granite. And lying there coiled, we pretended that life was the same as before. When we were both still children, and when trust, like time, was constant. And, of course, always there.

My parents were in the kitchen, basting the turkey. The meaty roast smells permeated the house and made both my brother and I nauseous, as we attempted to finish off the last two chocolates from a box of Cadbury’s Milk Tray. We were standing in front of the Christmas tree, the lights dangerously flickering and buzzing due to a faulty connection somewhere near the star (something my mother had already warned me not to touch with wet hands). We were frustrated, looking at the piles of unopened presents scattered about underneath, presents we weren’t allowed to touch until after lunch.

‘Only another hour to go,’ said my father as he skipped into the living room dressed as an elf. His youthful features stood out from under his hat, and it struck me that he looked more like Peter Pan than an elf: eternal boy rather than spiteful sprite.