Still Here (9780748112357), page 5
Joseph
By working out at the gym regularly, I’m starting to meet people socially. Last night I went to dinner with the Rebicks. The brother and sister, Sam and Alix, have just lost their mother. I had looked in at the shiva the previous week to pay my respects: it was packed, a revelation to me, an insight into a world I knew absolutely nothing about. When I was growing up in Chicago, the England they taught us about in school and which I saw at the movies was stately homes and castles, Shakespeare and kings and queens, Laurence Olivier and Alec Guinness. At home, you might say that everyone came from Europe but no one had actually been there, not even my father who during the war was itching to get to France or the Pacific but, rated 4R because of his eyesight, sat out the entire conflict behind a desk in Washington doing the paperwork for the Normandy landings. By the time I reached my teens I’d had to retool that impression because now, to me, England had turned into the land of the Beatles, of ‘She Loves You’. Pretty quickly we were a gang of stoned kids lying around my parents’ garage scanning the Sgt Pepper album cover, fighting over who these weird people were, once we’d quickly identified Bob Dylan and Marilyn Monroe, and my father coming in and saying, ‘Well, that’s W. C. Fields.’ I remember when I was in the army we used to sit on the half-track and sing ‘Yellow Submarine’ and when we took turns to guard our prisoners, they sang it also, the Beatles songs everyone knew, even our enemies. We sang ‘All You Need Is Love’ and laughed ourselves silly because if we were sure of anything, in the army, it was that you needed much more than love, a lot more. Just to start with you needed a new helmet and a gun that didn’t jam when you tried to fire it, and better rations and better lieutenants and better generals. On the battlefield you could do very easily without love but you couldn’t do without at least one individual who had some kind of functioning plan to get you out of there alive.
But what I had never expected in England, and certainly not in Liverpool, were Jews. The apartment in the Albert Dock was full of them, these old people sitting under framed prints of Hockney and Pollock and Rothko, all eating and urging the bereaved to eat. I asked my grandfather once, after my great-aunt Minnie, his sister, died, why do people bring so much food to a shiva house? He’d gotten very little at that point, he must have been over ninety, and he leaned towards me with his rye-bread breath and said, ‘I dunno, Joe. Maybe it’s because after a death, you have no choice but to keep your strength up to show God that you are still alive and he should not be tempted to take you too, in his mysterious wisdom.’ These old Jews were standing at the window treading cake crumbs into the rugs and watching the river, looking at the shipyards, listening to the white seagulls screaming in the estuary and asking (with exactly the same rye-bread odour as my zaidie, which made me think of him for the first time in years), ‘How much does a place like this go for, nowadays?’ And when they heard the reply, I saw how they looked at each other, amazed. ‘When Sam said to me he was buying one of these places,’ someone was saying, ‘I told him that he was out of his mind. Who would pay to live in a flat in an abandoned dock in the centre of town where they’ll knife you when you set one foot out the door? You’re making a terrible investment, I said that right to his face.’
After I’d shaken hands with the Rebicks and Sam’s three kids, two girls and a boy, all in their twenties now, I sat down in a really uncomfortable chair next to this old guy, Baruch Neslen. He reminded me in looks of my uncle Willie, my mother’s brother-in-law, the Philadelphia judge who got the cowboy bug when he was a kid watching Hopalong Cassidy movies, and sits in court in a Stetson hat and bootstring tie, which is pretty incongruous for a little fat Jew with short legs and a goatee. When the Marlboro man died of lung cancer, my uncle Willie said, ‘If you don’t have to provide your own horse, I’m ready to step up and take that job right away.’ I said, ‘Uncle Willie, you smoke Camels.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry, I’m not brand loyal.’
I was in for an earful. Neslen had my uncle Willie’s girth but lacked his humour. He told me he had made his money from selling toys, then diversified into arcade games. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you would be surprised what a living can be made out of childishness. Now, their father,’ he pointed at Sam, ‘everyone will tell you was a very smart man and it’s true, he could have set up on Rodney Street and had the cream of society for his patients, he could have specialised, but no, no, he was stubborn, he opens up on Upper Parliament Street back in the forties when the schvartzes from the African ships were already living there, in those big houses they pulled down in the seventies. They used to be gentlemen’s mansions and what did the schvartzes make of them? Slums. Tenements. You should have seen those houses in my day, in the twenties, beautiful they were, built in Queen Victoria’s time for men with wealth, men who worked in the insurance offices and kept a carriage in the back, the mews, they called them, the stables before the motor-car. I see houses like that in London go for a million pound. Here, they had to pull them down because the halls stank of things you don’t even want to know about. If we’d had houses like that to live in when we got off the boat from Russia do you know what we would have made of them? Palaces, because the women were balabatish, they knew how to keep a home clean and a kitchen always full of food and the children turned out like princes and princesses, or as far as you could manage on the wage you got in those days, when your father didn’t speak English but everyone, everyone helped out with what he could. I was lathering faces in a barber shop when I was six years old so we would go for nothing. Not like the Irish who spent their money on drink and came home schickered up every night and the schvartzes played their banjos like there was no tomorrow. That’s what Rebick gave his life to, a smart man, supposedly. You call that smart? Bringing their babies into the world instead of telling them, “You don’t want babies? Then keep your putz to yourself.” And why did he waste his time? Because he was a Communist, a red. He should see Soviet Russia now.’
Before I came here I thought the English were supposed to be reserved but these people are so loquacious! It’s a very talkative city.
Neslen was helping himself to cake from a plate offered by the brother’s wife, Melanie. She is what my mother would have called ‘a homely girl’, but she keeps herself in shape; there can’t be an ounce of fat on her, and the dress she was wearing, a little black thing in some kind of silky stuff, did her justice. She looked particularly good from the back, when she was bending over with the honey cake, though for myself I prefer a figure that is a little more zahftig, short and squeezy.
‘I’ll tell you about the reds. The reds destroyed this city. Liverpool is finished. The North West is finished. And why? Because of the greed of the dockers who wanted a hundred pound a week to sit on their backsides doing bugger all while I sweated blood in my business, watching every second of the day while they robbed me blind and stole the stock and fiddled the books. Not a single one ever wanted to do an honest day’s graft and you know why? Because they were all counting on one thing, that one day they’d win the pools and they’d retire and live the life of Reilly. That’s the workers for you, Saul Rebick’s precious workers.’
An old lady with an awful lot of coral lipstick on her teeth, sitting a few old people down, shouted, ‘Oh, shut up, Baruch. Behave yourself, you’re at a shiva house. Have some respect.’
‘Her,’ said the old man, pointing across the room at the sister. ‘She was the only smart one. The people with brains got out while the going was good. I’d have got out myself if it hadn’t been too late. For myself I left it too long, but if you’re born here now you should crawl on your hands and knees out of your mother’s belly to get away from this place. The drug-dealers and the gangsters alone will eat you alive.’ He had a soft little red mouth and button eyes and, with a glass of lemon tea at his lips, he turned and asked me a question at last, the one I’d been waiting all evening to answer: ‘So, what are you doing here?’
‘I see a business opportunity,’ I told him.
‘What line of work are you in?’
‘I’m an architect. I build hotels.’
‘You’re building a hotel here?’ He turned to the old lady and tapped his finger against his forehead. ‘He’s brought his own mishegoss to Liverpool with him, like we didn’t have enough already.’ Two hands were raised palm up to his audience, the fingers right up the knuckles stained with nicotine.
‘Certainly here, not even a quarter of a mile away, just a few minutes’ walk.’
‘Now I know you’re crazy.’
‘Not at all. I see tremendous potential along the waterfront. Your city officials tell me that the future is going to be tourism and I agree. All your existing hotels are at maximum occupancy at weekends. The city’s advertising campaign in America has been very successful. Of course, when people come to England they want to see Big Ben and Stratford-upon-Avon and guys in Edinburgh in skirts - the usual tourist crap - but nine million future Americans left the old world from this city, they set sail from right here, where we’re sitting. That’s a piece of nearly every American’s family history and not only do you have that but you also have your culture, you have the Beatles and every American knows who they are. I’m extremely optimistic about the future of this place.’
‘So what kind of hotel are you planning to build?’ Neslen asked me. Now he was interested. The little red mouth was wet and his voice hoarse. ‘We already have a Holiday Inn, a Crowne Plaza. Beautiful places.’
‘I build art hotels. I’ve—’
‘You build what?’
‘Art hotels. I have five in five different cities.’ I ticked them off. ‘San Francisco, my first, then Toronto, Frankfurt, Prague, Madrid. I build in industrial areas often using derelict building stock, conversions, though here I’m starting from scratch. In each hotel there is a range of art, always modern, nothing that’s before 1980, and all from the city I’m building in. I do deals with local painters and sculptors - they get a wonderful showcase for their work and the design is up to me. I go to Italy and Germany and I talk to designers and I commission them to do exactly what I want. I love German design - everything functional, every detail exact and with a style that’s submerged, not at all obvious or flashy. I have fabulous taste, Mr Neslen - that is why people stay in my hotels, because they see something in them and what they see is me, my taste.’
‘These are five-star hotels?’
‘No. Four-star. With five-star you get unnecessary luxuries. I don’t put in restaurants, just little coffee shops and room service, because they’re in big cities where you can already eat in great restaurants. I don’t put in pools either . . .’
He slumped back in his chair, tired, old and cranky. The motor of whatever energy he had left was running down and he was losing interest. A cookie hung from his fingers, sprinkling nuts on the floor.
‘You’re wasting your time,’ he said. ‘This city is finished, the drug-dealers have taken it over, the reds, the extortion rackets . . .’
Sam, the brother, came over and squatted on the floor next to him, rocking on his heels. The wife, Melanie, filled up Neslen’s glass with whisky. ‘The thing you’ve got to understand about Merseyside, Joseph,’ Sam said, ‘is this. We’re not like everyone else. Other people have harmless daydreams. They take up feng shui or they tattoo Celtic rings round their arms or they think they’ve been abducted by aliens or sacrificed as babies in satanic cults. Liverpool went one better. We decided to do what the miners couldn’t do and the steel workers couldn’t do - take on the government single-handed, now that’s a real fantasy. We fell for one of the one-day wonders that strut the streets, who told us the capitalists could go fuck themselves, excuse me, Ida, because Liverpool was going to be a capitalist-free zone.’
‘You see?’ Neslen cried. ‘What did I tell you?’
Another elderly man was approaching; he didn’t look in any way Jewish, his belly carried in front of him like a rice bowl. His hands had lost their flesh and he held his fingers crooked so the gold signet rings on them didn’t fall off and clatter to the floor. ‘Can I join you for a minute, get the weight off my feet?’
‘Certainly,’ Sam said to him, and turning to me, ‘Joseph, have you met Kevin Wong?’
‘I hear you’re building a hotel, Mr Shields.’
‘Now, how do you know that?’
‘He knows everything,’ Sam said.
‘You’re a newspaperman?’
‘Me? Ha ha, very funny, I’m a solicitor.’
‘So you know all the villains, the gangsters? ‘
‘Please. I have nothing to do with criminal law. I deal in contracts, industrial-injury cases, disputes, that kind of thing.’
‘Kevin, Sam said, ‘drew up the first contract between Brian Epstein and the Beatles.’
‘Yes. And Gerry and the Pacemakers and Cilla Black, all the Liverpool groups before Mr Epstein went away to London, a wonderful woman, his mother, Queenie. I never believed he was a fruit. I told Queenie, “In London he’ll find a girl, trust me,” but sadly, he died far too young, a big shame.’
‘So you knew the Beatles?’
‘Oh, yes, very much so, they all came to me when they were in trouble over whatever.’
‘Like what?’
‘I can’t go into any of that, client confidentiality, but there were scrapes, Mr Shields, plenty of scrapes. It was Brian, though, that I gave my loyalty to. I thought to myself, This pop-singing combo, a nine-day wonder, but Brian, he’ll get other singers, that’s where the business is, managing them. Even when he had his Rolls-Royce we never lost touch. Through him I was invited to the London Palladium the time the Beatles played their Royal Command Performance in front of the Queen. Another time I had the privilege of personally shaking hands with Benny Hill. I have the autographs of all the Beverley Sisters.’
‘Wow,’ I said, politely.
‘All framed on my office wall.’
There was a crowd round us now. The sister had appeared from the kitchen holding a bottle of whisky to refill the glasses and another platter of cookies; a tall woman in a black trouser suit, she had three or four inches on her brother, a model’s figure gone in the middle. I think she might have been a dish in her day but she has that drawn, haggard look that surgeons in America fix for ten thousand dollars, or so Erica tells me. And I said to her, years ago, ‘Please, never touch your face.’ She refilled Neslen’s glass and gave one to me, which I took, because this is what you drink at a shiva house, not Chardonnay. That’s not a tradition one can break with. It must have been schnapps in the old country.
‘You want to hear a joke?’ I asked them, looking round, smiling. There was no reason for me to discuss my business in the middle of a gloomfest about the city’s future. They were wrong, I was right and would prove them so. They were just going to have to wait. My hotel will open in January 2001. The company I build for already has advance bookings.
‘Why do ninety-eight per cent of American Jews approve of Janet Reno’s hijacking of Elian Gonzales?’ They turned to each other and smiled. They could sense a good one. ‘Because they know what it’s like to be trapped in Miami with relatives.’
I looked around to see how it had gone down. Sam had thrown back his head and was slapping his hand on the thigh of his pants. Wong was smiling, Neslen was nodding, ‘Very good, very good.’ The old lady was saying, ‘What? what? I didn’t hear the punchline, tell me again.’
Melanie nudged the sister. ‘Alix, tell the one you told me.’
‘Okay. But it’s not a belly-laugh joke. Why don’t Jews drink?’
Neslen raised his glass. ‘Except on sad occasions.’
‘Because alcohol dulls the pain.’
‘That reminds me,’ said Neslen, ‘of the definition of a Jewish telegram: start worrying, details to follow.’
‘You know,’ I said to Alix, ‘when I met your brother in the gym and he told me he was Jewish and that there was a Jewish community here I thought, Are you kidding? And if there are Jews they’re not real Jews, like the people I grew up with in Chicago - really, I didn’t know what to expect. But obviously I was wrong. You truly are real Jews. I’ll e-mail that one to my wife.’ I saw something flicker in her eyes and recognised whatever it was from some of Erica’s divorcée friends, the bitter women who come round to our house and sit with her over coffee talking about what assholes men are, the disappointment of the single woman who has to strike yet another possibility off the list.
But I meant it, it was a great joke.
‘Do you live here in Liverpool?’ I asked her. ‘Or are you visiting for your mother’s funeral?’
‘I live in France but I travel a lot. Listen, pay no attention to any of them. They don’t know what they’re talking about. Personally, I like the sound of what you’re doing, you build your hotel, and when you’ve built it, they’ll be the first to put their heads in and look around and in twenty years they’ll still be saying, “No one thought it could be done, but it was a Jew who built this place, did you know that?” You’ll be claimed, you’ll be an honorary citizen of the city. They’ll make you forget you ever came from Chicago.’
