The Elected Member Read online

  Norman pushed the cup back to his father. ‘Go on, taste it,’ he said petulantly, ‘you know there’s something in it.’

  Rabbi Zweck took another dutiful mouthful, and pronounced his verdict. ‘Nothing,’ he said. He already felt drowsy and he put his hand to his forehead.

  ‘Leave him alone, can’t you,’ Bella said.

  ‘Well, you taste it again then,’ he sulked. ‘If anyone’s going to croak in this house, it’s not going to be me.’ He stood over her while she drank. After a mouthful, Bella managed to put the cup down.

  ‘Well,’ he said, standing at the door, ‘I wish you long life, both of you.’ Bella heard him stamp back into his room and lock the door behind him.

  ‘What now?’ she said helplessly. Her father slipped his head over the table. She shook him gently, but he was fast asleep. She sat beside him wondering how to shoulder the responsibility alone. She couldn’t forget the look on her brother’s face as he stood over her watching her drink. If only she had not been his sister, she could have put her arm round him and believed in him for his sake. She could even have loved him. But blood was a buffer to that kind of loving, the unselfish kind. She had loved him once and he, her, when they were both children and she legitimately in those white socks. Neither had mentioned it since, no-one had ever shared their secret, ‘though God knows, the thought occurred to her, Dr Levy must have got it out of him by now. She got up to clear the table, but felt her knees give way beneath her. She didn’t try to fight it, she wanted to opt out of it all for a while. She even hoped she’d sleep for ever. She slumped back onto her chair and surrendered to the stupor that gradually overcame her.

  Norman pushed the sideboard against the door and squatted on the floor. Even though he had drawn his curtains, the light that insisted through the thin material, had driven his companions away. He decided he would buy some thick velvet curtains, lined with heavy black, so that it would be night in his room always with his crawling proof around him. It was in the daylight and in his undeniable lack of company, that the terrifying question of his sanity nagged at him. Even to ask it of himself was an admission that his father and sister had a case to argue. No, he must not on any account allow that question, but with what force, in the naked daylight, could he oust it from him? He sat there, unarmed, the question surrounding him. It was only a matter of time before it would gently invade his privacy. Am I mad? Are there really silver-fish? If there are, where are they now? It’s Bella’s fault that she’s given me these curtains. They scurry away from the light. Why did she not believe him? Nor his father? What particular madness did they have that they were so blind to his sanity? And if they couldn’t see them, why should it then outrage him? Now the questions had had their fill and were satisfied, and they left him wounded and alone, waiting through the long day for the night to come and gather his forces.

  He heard the door bell ring. They were coming to fetch him. It was that clot Levy with his needle coming to put him to sleep, like last time. He leapt up and moved the chest of drawers against the door. He only wanted to hold out till nightfall when more evidence would be available. Then he would let them in, all of them. ‘Then we’ll see who’s mad,’ he said to himself. He listened, but no-one seemed to be answering the door. He hadn’t heard anyone go out, so his father and sister must still be in the flat. He hoped that the caller, whoever it was, would go away, but the bell rang again, longer this time, and repeatedly. He waited. In between rings, he heard the silence in the flat. They had slipped out without his hearing. Where had they gone? Had they gone to fetch someone to take him away?

  And was that someone already at the door? He heard the letter-box flap. ‘Miss Zweck?’ a high-pitched voice hissed through the hall. It was Terry, the assistant in the shop. He was safe, little too, and frail. Norman moved the sideboard away and opened his door. ‘What d’you want?’ he called through the hall. ‘Miss Zweck,’ Terry said. ‘She hasn’t come back to the shop. It’s my lunch hour.’

  ‘She’s not here,’ Norman said. ‘You’ll have to go downstairs and wait for her. Sorry,’ he added. He felt very tender towards the boy, as the only person in his orbit who did not think he was mad. Terry had seen them. One night after the shop had closed, and his father and sister were out, Terry had come to his room and seen them. He had stood riveted to the carpet, terrified, his hand clutching the door to run away from them. ‘I can’t stand it,’ he said eventually. Norman let him go, grateful for his understanding.

  ‘Can’t you come down?’ Terry said timidly.

  ‘I can’t. I’m trying to get rid of the things in my room.’

  He heard Terry’s steps down the stone stairway, taking them two by two, and landing on the stone floor at the foot of the stairs.

  Norman stood in the empty hall. He wondered where they had gone. He heard a faint breathing noise, and with overwhelming joy, he knew they had come back to his room. But the noise grew faint as he entered. Then he heard it behind him, echoing through the hall. He leaned against his door, taking in the full meaning of this new development. Without doubt they were in there, in complete and total invasion of the whole flat. He was satisfied. Now they would have to listen to him, because -they were everywhere. He was vindicated. But he wouldn’t revenge himself on them. He would be gentle and tolerant, and forgive them their accusations. He longed for his father and sister to come back. He opened his bedroom door wide, and drew his curtains. He no longer needed his privacy. He walked through the hall towards the kitchen. He noticed how the noise increased, but it did not trouble him. The kitchen was the obvious place for them to congregate in a mass. He himself had seen them there before; in fact, there were few places he didn’t see them, if he wished to look. But now they had grown tired of being ignored, and they had come to the kitchen in armies, for recognition. He reached the kitchen door. It was ajar and the noise by now was thunderous. He hesitated with joy, postponing the final confirmation of what he knew would be his salvation. Then he threw the door open wide.

  His father sat there, slumped over the table. Snoring. His father was snoring. That was all. Even Norman, to whom sounds of life and death and the imagination had become so confused, even he had to equate the noise with his sleeping father. Bella, at his side, contributed a humble descant to her father’s theme. What an ugly pair they are, he thought. He looked at Bella’s white socked feet under the table, and the coarse tufts of black hair that the elastic had bunched around the rim. Everyone blamed him for those socks, but Christ. she didn’t have to go on wearing them. He avoided looking at her face. He had loved her once, because it was forbidden.

  Really, he reflected, the only time in his life he had loved. He looked quickly at his father. His skull cap had slipped over onto one ear, and the visible half of his head was veined like an old woman’s hand. This was the man who had told him that the sea had parted for the Jews, the man who believed in miracles, the man who believed in all good men except his own son. Norman felt pity for him, but he stood his ground. He would not allow himself to be moved, neither by his father’s old head nor his sister’s white socks. He had to go on hating them, until they would begin to understand. He took his stand between the two of them, and opening his mouth, he let out a long piercing scream. They moved simultaneously, the one towards the other, as if in half-sleep. sensing disaster, and seeking protection. Bella was the first to open her eyes, but she quickly closed them again, as if to obliterate the split-second reality she had faced. Rabbi Zweck opened his eyes slowly. moaned. and kept them open. His sleep had been profound, but it had embraced all the while, the picture of his son’s tragedy. So he looked at Norman and adjusted quickly, because not for a second in his sleep had he dismfised Kim. Bella opened her eyes again and was compelled to come to terms with the awakening. ‘The tea,’ she said to herself. that he had survived. her mad brother, with his silver-fish. And his sister Esther, married and out of it all, and their mother dead, and him killing their father with his madness. She stood up and put her a
rm on her father’s shoulder. ‘What shall we do?’ she said helplessly.

  ‘What time is it?’ Rabbi Zweck asked.

  ‘It’s just two.’

  ‘Then what about Terry’s lunch?’ he said. He grasped at the problem as something concrete. At least it was a problem that could be solved, and quickly. ‘Go, look after the shop,’ he said to Bella.

  ‘What about him?’ Bella said. She gave him the anonymity of a lunatic. ‘What are we going to do about him?’ Her anger and hatred were consuming her.

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ Norman said. ‘I’m going to burn up my carpet and get rid of them.’ He smiled at her innocently.

  ‘Oh God,’ she said, collapsing onto a chair, ‘how much more must we take? You’re wrong,’ she screamed at him suddenly, ‘there are no insects in this flat. You’re wrong, you’re wrong,’ she shouted. ‘Madmen are always wrong.’

  Norman went back to his room. He leaned against the keyhole and listened for the next move. After a while, he heard Bella walking across the hall and out of the door, and the ring on the telephone as his father began to dial. He moved away from the door. His father was calling Dr Levy; they would go through it all again. He became suddenly weary of the whole situation. ‘It would be so much easier if I were really mad,’ he said to himself. ‘Then they would make me better and I wouldn’t see them any more.’ He toyed with the idea of pretending he was mad, so that they could ‘cure’ him, and then after the ‘cure’, he would still see them, and maybe then they would believe him. But he couldn’t pretend he was mad. ‘Only fringe madmen can fake lunacy,’ he said to himself. ‘I could never take them in. Why, even that clot Levy would see through me.

  Straight away. He thinks I’m mad, but only as long as I’m sane. He’s got to think that. It’s his living. If old Levy ever thought I was sane, I’d really get worried.’ He smiled to himself. They were all mad, all of them, and with this supreme conviction, he locked his door.

  His father was still on the telephone, but he did not want to listen. He didn’t want to be forced into making plans. Deep inside him, he felt the terrible pre-pain of surrender, that he had felt a few months ago, when Dr Levy’s needle had jabbed his arm. ‘This time,’ he said aloud, ‘I must resist them. I’m right, I’m right,’ he screeched into himself. and he heard the echo of his sister’s contrary accusation.

  He squatted on the floor and tried not to think of what they would do to him. After a time, he heard the letter-box rattle and he waited for his father to open the door.

  ‘Does Norman Zweck live here?’ he heard a man’s voice say, and somehow or other he knew that the man was carrying documents in his hand.

  There were two of them, clad in black and bureaucracy, with identical brown briefcases, and Rabbi Zweck let them in. Like two undertakers, they could well have carried a tape-measure.

  ‘Could we go somewhere and talk,’ one of the doctors enquired, looking around the hall for a convenient corner. ‘In the kitchen,’ Rabbi Zweck said tonelessly, and the two men followed him. They sat down at the table and came to the point straight away. ‘Dr Levy has told us the position,’ one of them said. ‘You understand of course, that it is necessary for us to see your son. We have to recommend that he is suitable for hospital treatment. It’s the law, you know,’ he added gently.

  ‘Yes, it’s the law,’ Rabbi Zweck repeated. He could not understand why he had let these two men into the flat. He had invited them in to certify his son. He was helping them to put his boy away: He was agreeing with them that his son was mad. ‘But,’ he started to protest, realising the magnitude of the situation, ‘is absolute necessary he should go to the hospital? Is only a little mad, my son,’ he pleaded.

  ‘I’ll tell him he shouldn’t take the pills any more, and he’ll get better. I promise you,’ he was pleading with them. ‘I promise you, on my poor wife’s memory, Olav hasholem.’ (what did these goyim know of such things?) ‘He’s not mad,’ he protested, ‘my son. Is tired he is a little. Not much sleep he’s had, is confused in his mind a little. I also, when I’m tired, a little bit zemischt I am.’ He heard the utter feebleness of his argument, and he resented that he should have to beg anybody for his son’s sanity. He got up quickly from his chair. ‘Please go,’ he said to them. ‘Thank you for coming. I’m sorry to put you to inconvenience. Is raining outside,’ he added, with painful irrelevancy.

  The doorbell rang again, and one of the men made to go to the door, while the other restrained Rabbi Zweck from moving. Rabbi Zweck brushed his arm away. ‘In my own house,’ he said quietly, ‘I can answer my own door.’ But he did not try to leave the room. Instinctively he felt that there would be a battle in the hall, as losing a battle as the one he was trying to ignore in the kitchen. He waited for the doctor to return. With him came another man. Mr Angus, as he was introduced, with the terrifying appendage of Mental Health Officer. Mr Angus put out his hand to Rabbi Zweck, and squeezed it with obscene professional understanding. Rabbi Zweck backed away and slumped weakly on his chair. ‘Is raining outside,’ he said again.

  The two doctors left the room. Mr Angus shut the door after them, and drew his chair to Rabbi Zweck’s side. He put his arm on his shoulder, and knew that he could say nothing. It was never easy. his job, but dealing with the next-of-kin was the worst part of it. Some of his colleagues. he knew, revelled in the ‘schadenfreude’ of their work, but he was different. And he promised himself, once again, as he had done so often in the last ten years, that he would find himself some other kind of work. They sat together and there was nothing to do but listen to the noises outside Norman’s door, and as they grew louder, Mr Angus moved his chair closer to the old man’s, and gently stroked his arm.

  ‘Get out,’ Norman was yelling. ‘What right have you to come into my room?’

  ‘Open the door,’ the doctor said gently. ‘We just want to talk to you. You don’t want us to force the door, do you? Now be a good boy.’

  It was the word ‘boy’ that triggered off Rabbi Zweck’s tears. He was a grown man, his son, and you called a grown man ‘boy’ only if you had contempt for him. ‘He’s not mad. is he, my son?’ he whispered to Mr Angus. Mr Angus squeezed his arm. ‘This is what’s best for him. I promise you. It’ll only be a few weeks, and he’ll be out again. It’ll all be over,’ he said. He refrained from adding, ‘until the next time’. He had dealt with lots of similar patients. He had comforted the stunned parents, or the weeping wives and children. By standing in front of doors, and wooing them with gentle lies, he had sincerely tried to camouflage the hideous paraphernalia of putting people away. It wasn’t so bad when they went voluntarily. It was when they resisted, like this one was doing. That was the hell of it, not for the patient himself, but for those who were watching and could not bear it. ‘When the doctors have seen him,’ he said, ‘I’ll talk to him. I’ll do what I can.’

  There were so many things that Rabbi Zweck wanted to know. How would they force him to go? Would they use a strait-jacket? Would there be policemen at the door? Would he go in a white ambulance? And what kind of place was he going to? And was it full of madmen, of real meshu-goyim, not like his son who was going to be better soon? But he daren’t ask any of these questions. He did not want to acknowledge the situation. But it screamed at him from outside the door. A large resounding kick and ‘We’ll have to get the police if you don’t let us in’.

  ‘Tell them to go away,’ Rabbi Zweck pleaded. ‘Or let me talk to him.’ He half rose to go to Norman’s door. Norman would never forgive him. He sat down again and put his hands over his face, and rocking gently to and fro, with praying and weeping, he stilled himself into a semblance of calm. He heard Norman’s door suddenly open, and again started weeping at his son’s surrender. He heard the doctors go inside, and shut the door behind them.

  ‘He’s better now, he’ll be all right now,’ he said to Mr Angus. ‘They’ve given him a shock and he’s better. It’s just he needed someone to teach him a lesson. Go home now, all of yo
u.’ He was offering a last-minute alibi, but his son had already confessed. Rabbi Zweck felt Mr Angus’ hand leave his arm, and he knew he was alone in the kitchen.

  He didn’t want to think of what was happening in Norman’s room. He couldn’t even understand that it had anything to do with him. He was only conscious that it was raining outside, with a thin endless drizzle. He heard two men walk through the hall and out of the front door. He was glad they hadn’t come to say goodbye to him. He just hoped they’d brought their umbrellas. He heard murmurings from Norman’s room, and he recalled the same quality of murmuring from the dying-bed of his wife, and he sensed that a similar catastrophe awaited him.

  ‘Papa,’ Norman called from his room. His voice was desperate and imploring like a little boy’s. It was a cry for immediate help and protection. It was a cry of physical pain, and Rabbi Zweck responded. Whatever had happened to his son, he would kiss it better, and tell him a story to keep his mind off the pain. He hurried to Norman’s room. Mr Angus was sitting on the bed, looking at Norman helplessly.

  ‘Papa,’ Norman pleaded as his father came in. ‘Tell this man to go away. People come here, strangers, and they come into my room, and they want to take me away. I haven’t done anything Papa, tell them I’m all right. Don’t let them take me away.’

  The door bell rang, and Mr Angus went out quickly to open the door.

  ‘They’ve come for me,’ Norman said. 'Papa, Papa,’ he beseeched him, ‘don’t let them take me.’

  Rabbi Zweck held him in his arms. ‘It’s only for you to get better,’ he said gently. ‘I’ll come with-you,’ he said, ‘we’ll go together.’

  ‘No, no,’ w Norman screamed. He tore himself away from his father and looked at him in utter bewilderment. ‘Papa?’ he said again, as if to question his father’s right to a son. ‘You, you can’t.’ He opened his eyes wide in sheer incredulity. He stared at his father without hate, without bitterness, only with complete and innocent refusal to believe what his father had said. It was a look that Rabbi Zweck would shoulder to his grave.