Fervor, page 23
* * *
The rabbi was done speaking. As though others besides me had been listening, a hush descended on the café. I asked what the story meant.
“When I first read it, there was no meaning. None that didn’t demean both human beings and God. Perhaps the idea is that when you go to war, you must be ready to bury your own children. Or perhaps it’s a warning about ambition. What do you think?”
I said it was a horrible story, whichever way you looked at it. But I wasn’t really thinking about biblical exegesis, or what it meant for Jewish worship. I was thinking about Tovyah’s sister, aged thirteen, reading this same story. Writing this story. Reading what she’d written.
* * *
Elsie stayed five days in all. On the morning she was due to catch her train home, she came to my room while her brother was in the shower. “I just wanted to say how lovely it was meeting you again,” she said. Her eyes scanned my room and came to rest on the window. Something in the garden beyond seemed to take her interest.
“I know you’ve read it, by the way. Please don’t get the wrong idea. Mummy knows how to sell a book, but she doesn’t know the first thing about Kabbalah. It’s not some secret magical sect, nothing ridiculous like that.”
I said I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“Not much of a liar, are you?”
She told me not to forget what we’d spoken about, the planned reconciliation. After she’d gone, Tovyah himself emerged from the bathroom with his dark fringe flattened against his forehead and a thick towel around his waist. I was still standing in my doorway, but his glasses were all steamed up and he managed to walk past without seeing me.
We next spoke at dusk, after he returned from walking Elsie to the train station. He sought me out, and was in a good mood, for once. He told me of what he’d been up to with Elsie, how they’d sat together in cafés and in libraries, him at his studies, she with a novel, followed by long strolls in the university parks, only turning back each evening when the light began to fail.
“It’s funny,” he concluded. “You’d think that with that crazy book coming out, things would be worse than ever. Don’t get me wrong, she’s as furious with Hannah as I am, but I think having something to rail against has done her good.”
Furious with Hannah, was she?
I asked why he had made such a thing of keeping me away from her. He apologised and put it down to misplaced insecurities. Then he told me about his birthday, his first outside the family home. It had been very simple, and absolutely perfect. They’d had dinner at the Randolph Hotel, then he’d taken her on a tour of the city, visiting the old haunts of some famous alumni. Back in his room, they’d played several rounds of chess before screening Les Règles de Jeu on his laptop and falling asleep halfway through. For an evening, at least, the years ahead shone with possibility.
“I got you something, by the way,” I said. I went over to my wardrobe and fetched the loosely wrapped parcel.
When I turned around, he asked, “What is it?”
“Open it!” I said, throwing it in his direction.
He did as instructed, carefully peeling back the Sellotape and unfolding the paper to reveal a faded denim jacket. Tovyah held it before him with his arms at full stretch. As far as I knew, he’d never owned anything like it.
“I know it’s not your usual thing,” I said. “But I thought it’d suit you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re not fifty, Tovyah. You’re twenty.”
Placing his gift on my bed, he removed his blazer and put it over the back of the chair at my desk. He then threaded his arms into his new jacket and popped the collar in the mirror.
“You like it?” I asked.
“It’s… magnificent.”
I walked up behind him and straightened the shoulders, so it hung properly.
“How’s the boy from Christ Church?” Tovyah asked.
“Just like your degree,” I said, milking the pause. “History.”
“Ho-ho,” Tovyah said.
I put my chin on his shoulder, and my arms around his waist. “And what about us?”
Tovyah nodded, slowly. “I do love you, Kate. But not like that. What happened last term was—I don’t know what that was.”
Uncoupling my arms, I took a step away, and my double in the mirror backed away from his double. “Just friends, then,” I said.
“Not just friends. You’re the only friend I’ve got.”
He turned around and we embraced. As he gripped my shoulder blade, I flooded with longing. For a time, we just stood there, holding each other. Then our mouths met and we were pulling off clothes. I was surprised by both his strength and his certainty. As he pressed into me, I told him to slow down, slow down, then pulled him towards my bed. Soon, he was rubbing between my legs, and as I grew wet he eased his fingers inside, first one then two.
I held him close, felt his tongue on my neck. Every corner of the room glowed with soft, inexplicable light. My body shivered, rippled, unfurled, collapsed.
Afterwards, we sat up against my pillow, eating pitted olives straight from the can, feeding them to one other, licking the salty brine from our fingers.
We slept in one another’s arms, our limbs coiled.
Come the morning, he told me he was planning to go home to his parents the following weekend for sabbath. Elsie wanted the two of them to confront Hannah together. Mussing with his hair, I said it sounded like the right thing to do—he couldn’t simply ignore them for the rest of his life. Then he asked me to come with him. Without me there, he said, he didn’t know if he could do it.
There was a silence. “Are you coming?” he said at last.
As I kissed him, the fear of rejection fled from his face.
NINETEEN
The house was so much as Hannah described it that arrival felt like a homecoming. The front garden throbbed in the heat of the day, colours migrating from one flower to the next. I hadn’t realised how secluded it was. On either side, the houses were separated by footpaths that led out into alleyways, and both had prominent for-sale signs. I’d arrived with Tovyah, and Hannah greeted us at the door. Her face lit up when she saw her son. “Tuvs! How handsome you look!” She threw her arms around him. Tovyah let himself be held for a moment before pulling away. After fussing over her son, Hannah’s attention fell on me.
“Lovely to see you again, Bridget,” she said.
“Actually, it’s—”
“Kate. I know. How nice that Tovyah brought you along.”
On the threshold, Tovyah reached up distractedly to touch the mezuzah, and I copied the gesture. Hannah offered to brew a pot of tea, but Tovyah said no for both of us. Hannah wished her son a happy birthday and presented him with a perfectly wrapped box, tied with green ribbon. Inside was a pair of cufflinks, which Tovyah regarded coolly.
“The word is thank you,” Hannah said. “Those weren’t cheap, you know.”
“My shirts all have buttoned sleeves.”
“They’re for dress shirts. Your friends will be turning twenty-one soon, you’ll need something nice to wear. Now, if you’re done being ungrateful, your father wants a word. He’s in his study.”
“Can it wait?” Tovyah said. “I just got here.”
Something silent passed between them. Tovyah said fine, and wandered upstairs, leaving me alone with his mother. The last time we’d stood this close, she’d insulted me, perhaps not knowing I could hear. But if she felt as uncomfortable as I did now, she didn’t let on.
“Don’t stand on ceremony. I imagine you want to look around. Go ahead! You might find some interesting things in this house. Be warned, we’re not the most attentive hosts. Sometimes we get people over then everyone forgets they’re here. One time, a friend of Gideon’s told me he’d been living with us a week! It generally works out, as long as you’re happy to grab breakfast for yourself, find your own towels. Pluck with a free hand, dear—nothing’s precious.”
I thanked her and asked where I was sleeping.
“Hang on.” She moved to the foot of the stairs. “Elsie? ELSIE! Tovyah’s little friend is here. She’ll be down in a minute. ELSIE!”
Unlike her mother, Elsie was subdued when she appeared. Her eyes kept wandering to the corners of rooms, as though checking for dust, and I got the uncomfortable sense that she didn’t recognise me. As I followed her upstairs, she didn’t attempt conversation.
On the landing, I said, “So, how are things looking? Still think we can play happy families?”
Elsie said nothing and proceeded to open a door.
“This is Gideon’s old room. Excuse the clutter.”
A few model aircraft sat on a table in the corner, and some magazines were stuffed under the bed, but it was far from messy. The window overlooked the back garden, giving a view of the town beyond, with roofs and chimneys stretching out for half a mile at least. “Mum’s just next door,” Elsie said. “Knock if you need anything. I’d better change for the sabbath.”
“Oh. Should I have brought something smarter?”
My current outfit consisted of a pair of black jeans and a floral blouse. In my bag, I had only some clean underwear, a change of shirt, and a light jacket.
Elsie looked me over. “You’ll do fine.” Before she left me, she said, “Don’t try sneaking over to Tovyah’s room in the night. If Mummy catches you, you’re dead.”
I’d been looking forward to seeing Elsie again and was unsettled by this coolness. Still, I was glad to be in the house where Tovyah had grown up, and I hoped that meeting the rest of the family would help me get my head round his mother’s extraordinary convictions.
I wondered when Tovyah would be done with his father and come find me.
After dropping my bag, I shut the door to Gideon’s room with the feeling that I was barricading myself in, then lay down on the bed. I must have slept badly the previous night, and I soon fell into darkness. I dreamt there was a room in the house that no one had ever noticed. It was right there, just behind that door in the study. And inside that room—
When I woke, there was a young man at the foot of the bed, squinting down at me. He had a lantern jaw and a broad physique, and he was dressed in a navy-blue suit, though he’d removed his tie and unbuttoned his collar.
“Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my bed?”
For a second, I had no idea where I was.
“Sorry. You must be Gideon.”
“You’d have thought so, yes. We haven’t had the pleasure.”
He did not talk like his siblings. He had neither Elsie’s seductive charm nor Tovyah’s solemn cadences. And as I would soon learn, flippancy was his default mode of conversation.
“There must have been some kind of mix-up,” I said.
“Obviously.”
“Elsie said you weren’t going to be home this weekend.”
“Oh, you’re a friend of hers, are you?”
“No, we’ve met, but I’m not exactly—”
“Not exactly a friend? Curiouser and curiouser! Well, in case you’ve got it on your mind to have a go, let me tell you something for free. Not worth it. She’s mad as a bucket of frogs, that girl.”
Was everyone in this family going to comment on my sex life?
“Actually, I was trying to say that Tovyah invited me. Not Elsie.”
“Tovyah? Hang on, yes, I know who you are.” Gideon suddenly looked very pleased with himself. He sat down on the end of the bed, wrapped his hand around my foot, and said, “You’re the sabbath goy! And here to broker the peace, am I right? Come on, then, Kissinger.”
There are few things more subtly distressing than a stranger watching you sleep. The fact that he was still holding my foot compounded the humiliation. I withdrew my leg and sat up.
“Don’t you live in Tel Aviv?”
He shrugged.
“What’s it like?”
“You’re not a lefty, are you? Of course you are. Friend of Tovyah’s, University of Oxford, thank you very much. I suppose you think I’m a nasty imperialist warrior.”
I could smell Gideon’s aftershave now—bold, faintly balsamic.
“I only meant I wasn’t expecting you’d be here. Is there somewhere else I should go?”
“Oh God, ha, you look terrified. Poor girl. Where are my manners? Yes, yes, I just flew in yesterday, and I was going to stay with some friends this weekend but turns out Sony’s preggers and Winston is going dry out of sympathy, the whole nine months, so there’s not a lick of booze in the house. Well, sod that, why not come home and observe the sabbath with dear old Hannah and Eric? Good for the soul, I hear. I’d forgotten Tovyah was going to be around, let alone… Anyway, yes, yes, you can have my grandfather’s room.”
“Are you sure?”
“I don’t suppose Zeide will mind.”
“Why do you speak like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you find everything funny. Are you trying to impress me?”
Gideon let out a short bark of laughter. “Darling, I hate to disappoint, but I gave up on impressing girls like you years ago. Don’t look so frightened. And before you ask, no, they don’t know, so don’t tell them. That’s not even true. They do know, of course they do, but they like pretending they don’t.”
Now that I had met all three of the Rosenthal children, I was able to triangulate certain of their mannerisms. Those clipped accents, for instance. Only two generations back, the Rosenthals spoke a broken English, a language formed as much in the ghetto and in the lager as it was in the streets of London. Here were the third generation of rising immigrants, whose place in this (or any) country has always seemed historically precarious. Children who from a young age had been corrected by both parents into pronouncing their words immaculately; there were no glottal stops, no dropped Hs here. At Oxford, I’d met public school boys with mockney accents. The Rosenthals, by contrast, sounded like aristocrats from a bygone era.
“Are you sure your parents won’t mind?”
“Mind what?”
“The room. Your grandfather’s.”
“Eric and Hannah? They won’t even notice. I suppose I should ask if there’s anything I can get for you. I believe that’s what hosts do.”
I asked him if I could have a cup of tea, Earl Grey if they had it, a splash of milk.
“Tea? You know it’s gone six, right? You’re not a bloody Mormon, are you?”
I had slept much longer than I realised. The daylight beyond the window had not yet started to drain.
“Mormons don’t drink tea,” I said, sulking.
“Do they not? And coffee neither? Wow. Imagine if you lived your whole life being good, helping old ladies cross the road, and then you get to Heaven and they don’t let you in because the fucking Mormons were right. Too many cappuccinos, mate, now off to hell.”
Gideon was rooting for something in his pocket. I got the impression he was someone who was never quite still, an odd quality for an ex-soldier.
“What are you drinking, then?” I asked.
“Wine. And I’m opening a bottle so you may as well have a glass. Don’t bother saying no thank you just to be polite.”
“I’m not polite on purpose,” I said. “It’s how I was brought up.”
“Was that a dig? I knew you had some spirit in you, behind those dull manners.”
He crossed to the wardrobe and began pulling out various bedclothes, cushions, and several shoe boxes closed with elastic bands. Eventually, after making quite a pile on the bedroom floor, he produced a dusty bottle of pinot noir.
“Knew it was in here! Last of his brothers, mind, saw each one taken off by the cruel hand of chance. Bit like Odysseus and the Cyclops, haha, except this time the Cyclops wins.”
He worked open the cork with an attachment on his key fob.
“You have to keep everything hidden in this house, especially booze. All my family are drinkers and thieves. Even little Tovyah. Where is he, by the way? Shouldn’t he be looking after you?”
The glass Gideon handed to me, which came from a cupboard by the side of the bed, had been neglected as long as the bottle itself. When he poured out the wine, particles of dirt floated on the inky surface.
“Well, then. L’chaim!” he cried. After his first extravagant gulp, his front teeth were already dark purple.
* * *
My new accommodation was spotless. I don’t just mean it was tidy; aside from the bed there was nothing in it. The closets were empty and even the bedside lamp had no bulb. Nor were there any prints on the wall, no photographs, nothing. Just an armchair to one side, a place to sit and read. I wondered if they were planning to redecorate and had only got round to clearing everything out. Someone must have come here for a quiet cigarette, now and then, as the walls carried the smell of smoke. I opened the windows a crack, before lighting one myself. I distrusted all that emptiness. It reminded me of a corner in a furniture store where a bed has been made up and a desk drawn near, giving the impression of a room where no room exists.
It was Tovyah who eventually came to summon me downstairs. When I asked what he’d been doing for the last two hours, he said he’d been reading, mostly. He had changed into a white shirt, freshly ironed, and was wearing the cuffs from his mother. The shirt was the gift from his father, he explained; Hannah and Eric had coordinated.
I told him he looked good and, when he did not return the compliment, asked if he was still planning to confront Hannah for what she had done. This, after all, was why he was here.
Tovyah shook his head. “I don’t think, with the state she’s in now, Elsie could take it. She gets into these funks, it’s like you can’t even talk to her. There’s no one there.”
When Eric had called for Tovyah earlier, it was not simply to present him with a new shirt. He needed to tell his son that Elsie was seriously not in good way. She’d been hitting the booze and was now in withdrawal. Just the day before, father and daughter had gone for a stroll around the block, just to get some air. And when they were out, they heard someone screaming obscenities, kicking bins. They looked up to see a woman on the far side of the road, dragging a bin-liner behind her, clinking with bottles. She was shouting at herself, shouting at the whole world. “You think all these people are going to Heaven?” she cried, gesturing at no one. “Welcome to hell!” Protectively, Eric drew Elsie towards himself, but he couldn’t get her to look away from the woman. As they walked parallel to her, she was still screaming.
