The Elected Member Read online

  ‘Norman,’ Rabbi Zweck tried again.

  Norman drew the blanket from his face. He had been sobbing.

  ‘What did they do to you in that room?’ Rabbi Zweck asked.

  ‘You brought me here,’ Norman said.

  ‘Is for your good. The doctors say.’ He himself didn’t want to take the responsibility.

  ‘But papa, you told them they could take me. You could have stopped them. Take me home. Please,’ Norman started crying.

  Rabbi Zweck tried to be firm. He cradled Norman’s head in his arms. ‘Stay here a little,’ he said. ‘Just a few days. You’ll go home today and you’ll start again with the pills.’

  ‘I won’t, I won’t,’ Norman shouted. ‘I promise. I won’t touch them again. Never. I know what they do to me. I promise.’ The tears welled from his swollen eyes, and it was more than Rabbi Zweck could bear. He began to wonder whether he had done the right thing. He even toyed with the idea of smuggling Norman out of there. He looked across at the opposite bed. He’d not noticed anybody there before, but now, a man sat there, bolt upright against the pillows, staring at him.

  ‘What you looking?’ Rabbi Zweck screamed at him. ‘Is not your business.’ He was in a frenzy of despair. ‘Is my son,’ he shouted. ‘What you looking?’

  The man continued to stare at him.

  ‘What you looking?’ Rabbi Zweck screamed at him again. Norman sat up in bed. ‘Sh, Papa,’ he said. ‘Take no notice. He’s mad. They’re all mad here. Take me home. Please,’ he begged.

  ‘I’ll see the doctor,’ Rabbi Zweck said. He knew he shouldn’t have said it. Painful as it was, he had to leave his son in this place.

  ‘Go and see him now,’ Norman said. ‘I’ll wait here for you,’ he said generously.

  ‘Look,’ said his father, ‘you must stay. Is for your own good,’ he went on helplessly. ‘Perhaps not too long you’ll stay. I’ll ask the doctor.’ He couldn’t stop himself saying it.

  ‘Go and ask him now.’

  ‘On my way out, I’ll ask him.’

  Norman looked at him with hatred. ‘I’ll tell you something,’ he said. ‘I’m as sane as you are, whatever that means, but if I stay in this nut-house, even for a few days, I’ll be mad as the rest of them. I promise you. You want me to go mad?’ he said.

  The nurse approached the bed and motioned Rabbi Zweck to leave. Rabbi Zweck was grateful that the nurse had come, but his sense of relief made him feel guilty. ‘Goodbye, Norman,’ he said, hating the weakness in himself. ‘I should go now. They won’t allow me any more. You should Norman went under his blanket.

  ‘Goodbye, Norman,’ Rabbi Zweck repeated.

  There was no answer. Rabbi Zweck bent over and kissed the blanketed hump and the nurse gently led him away.

  Outside the door, he asked to see the doctor. But as he was to learn in his subsequent visits, seeing a doctor in a mental home is a very hit and miss affair. You had to be on the spot at the right time and on the right day. Otherwise you had to make do with the male nurses, the infinite number of tranquilliser-trolley pushers who hourly plied their rounds of the beds, doling out substitute illusions, or oblivion. No, he didn’t want to see a nurse, Rabbi Zweck said. He wanted to see a doctor.

  ‘He’s not here, and he won’t be here till tomorrow.’

  ‘Who shall I see then?’ Rabbi Zweck asked timidly.

  ‘You can see the nurse in charge.’

  Rabbi Zweck was led into the room where Norman had first been taken. He was surprised to find it small and inoffensive, with a table, a couple of chairs, and a trolley of medicine. Behind the table sat a white-coated nurse. He rose as Rabbi Zweck entered and shifted a chair for him to sit down. Under the chair, Rabbi Zweck caught sight of one of Norman’s shoes, turned down at heel, and empty. He began to cry, openly and unashamed. The nurse put his arm on his sleeve. ‘He’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘This is the worst time, especially for you.’

  ‘How long he should stay?’

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ the nurse said. ‘The doctor will look at him tomorrow.’

  ‘I shall come tomorrow?’ Rabbi Zweck asked.

  ‘It’s better to leave it for a few days. You can ring up any time.’

  ‘Where does he get them from?’ Rabbi Zweck said. ‘I’ll find out, I’ll ransack the house. I’ll find who gives them to him.’ He crumpled up on the chair hopelessly.

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ the nurse said. ‘Let’s get him over it first. He’ll settle down after a few days. He’ll even get to liking it here.’

  Rabbi Zweck shuddered. He didn’t want his son liking it here. He wanted him home without his silver fish, and a good son to him. ‘At home he sees them,’ he said tonelessly. ‘Everywhere he sees them. He smells them, he hears them. They live with him. Why my son? My clever son,’ he said, almost to himself.

  The nurse leaned forward over the table. ‘Rabbi,’ he said softly, ‘if your son went out into the garden, and came back and said, ‘father, I’ve seen a burning bush, would you not bless him?’

  He guided Rabbi Zweck to the door. In the corridor, the driver of the car was waiting for him. Mr Angus had disappeared, and Rabbi Zweck was the sole passenger on the long journey home. ‘I’ll ransack the house,’ he said to himself, over and over again, and he kept hearing Norman’s pleading voice to take him home.

  The shop was empty when he arrived, and Bella was sitting behind the counter. She didn’t want to talk about it and neither did her father. She tried to persuade him to go to bed, but he was restless. He trudged upstairs to the flat and, without taking off his coat, he went straight to Norman’s room.

  Chapter 4

  At first, Rabbi Zweck frantically opened every drawer, rummaging through their contents with feverish fingers. Then, exhausted, he sat down on the bed. He knew it was going to be a long job. There was no lack of material, and each scrap of paper might yield a clue, or a clue to dues of his son’s murderer. Or perhaps there were many murderers, a clutch of assassins, their pockets lined with his son’s craving.

  When his wife, God bless her soul, was dying, she had leased the room, lock, stock and barrel, to Norman. All the papers that his wife had accumulated over the years, lay there still, disordered in their own time, but now, even more so by Norman’s additions. In his initial scrummaging, Rabbi Zweck had caught sight of marriage papers, school reports, birth certificates, shuffled in disarray, with no respect to chronology. Yes, it would be a long job, and God knows what irrelevant yet painful material the search was likely to yield. He huddled himself into his coat. He felt his body cold. Sitting there on the bed. facing the ferreted drawers, he felt like a thief, and he began to hate himself for having volunteered for the job. A man had no right to invade another man’s privacy, as he was doing, and the sheer immorality of his act sickened him. A man had to be dead before you could go through his pockets. and even then, the action was faintly treacherous. Yet it had to be done, and may God forgive him for his disloyalty. He hoped fervently that Norman was sleeping.

  He got off the bed, and stared at the drawers. He would have to make a start. He knelt down and fingered through the bundles, looking for something that would least incriminate his son, that would least enter into his son’s private life. Just to begin with, he promised himself, then he would tackle the job properly. Going through one of the drawers, he ignored Norman’s diaries and a bundle of letters. He dreaded having to go through those, so he shut his eyes and hid them at the back of one of the drawers. He hoped he’d never find them again. Then he came across a worn faded parchment. He laid the folded document on the floor, and as he opened it, it split slightly along the creases. He spread it out carefully. It was stamped and red-sealed with officialdom and he recognised it as his paper of naturalisation. He smiled. He was pleased with his find.

  It had nothing to do with Norman. It was part of his own life, and safely nostalgic to investigate. He tried to order his memory so that it would recall the beginning of his story. Surrounded a
s he was by the chaos of neglected continuity. he wanted desperately to get one thing straight, himself and his beginnings in England, long before Sarah, God bless her, his wife, and Norman, God help him, his son. He wanted to shed himself of his married and paternal years, of the birth of his children and Sarah’s passing. He wanted to peel off circumstance, to whittle himself down to the short legged stubborn pinpoint that would answer to the name of Abraham Zweck.

  He spread his hand over the document, and concentrated on the ship that had brought him to England, gripping the rails to hold on to the recollection. In his state of sadness and anxiety, it was imperative to escape into his past. for his present was unbearable. He gripped the rails tightly. He had to hang on to them until the cold steel was real under his hands. And when he felt it, cold and undeniable in his grip, he was safely wrapped in his twenty-three years, almost fifty years ago, in sight of a new and frightening land.

  The shore line sickened him. While out at sea, the reality of the new life that awaited him, and the remembrance of the severed ties at home in Lithuania, had both become meaningless. But now, faced with the shore, he experienced again the pain of departure, and the fearful anticipation of his arrival. He would never see his parents again. That much was certain. And they knew it too. His brothers, both married with children, had found it harder to leave, and they had sent him, the baby, to scout the lay of the land, and eventually to send for them. He shivered at the responsibility, with a slight resentment at their expectations.

  He turned his back on the approaching coastline. He looked down at himself. His small black boots and white wool socks, protruded untidily beneath his long black coat. The lowest button was undone, and fell open on the white gaiters. The shadow of his wide-brimmed black hat crossed the tip of his boots, and as he bent forward, his side-locks too, cast their shadows, and he rocked his head to and fro, trying to fit the shadow hat on his boots and the curls alongside. At last he struck a position where the whole picture was symmetrical, his boots in the centre, his shadow hat fitting squarely across the toe-caps, bracketed by the side-locks on each side. He held the picture steady, until a pair of naval boots moved onto it, and blocked it out. Abraham Zweck looked up and saw the officer smiling at him. ‘Another half an hour and we’ll be landing,’ he said. Abraham Zweck raised his eyebrows. It was the safest movement to make if you didn’t understand the language. It could mean both ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and the nuances of ‘perhaps’ and ‘nevertheless’. The officer passed on, and Abraham Zweck turned back to look at the shore line which had suddenly crept up behind him, solid and irrefutable.

  He put his hand in his inside pocket, checking once again on the slip of paper that was his sole contact in the strange world that approached him. He looked at the crumpled sheet. The name was Rabbi Solomon, and the address, number 16 of an unreadable street followed by the letters E.2. He went down the ladder steps that led to the bottom deck. He had left his parcels there, stacked in a corner while he had gone to the upper deck for air. He went to collect them, and as he picked them up, the string slipped and the brown paper gaped with its lining of Russian newspapers. He tried to push both sides together, but the string slipped completely, and he found himself surrounded by rolled socks, woollen underwear, his prayer shawl, prayer books, and an odd white gaiter. He shook the paper to free whatever might be left inside. The other gaiter fell out, and that was all. He shivered with humiliation. A poor Jew he was indeed, who could not even pack a parcel, an occupation that was a forte amongst his people. He retrieved the prayer book, kissing it, and stood up and looked around him. Yes, that was all he had. That was all he was, his body and its means of function. As the parcel had gaped open, it had undressed him, and as he grew conscious of the people staring at him, he felt ashamed, not of his poverty, but of his nakedness. He put a hand on his crotch, gripping the black alpaca of his coat, and he bent down to retrieve the rest of his person. He took his time about it, wanting the crowd to disperse. Then he sat on the deck and retied his parcel securely, and when it was done, he followed the passengers down the gangway.

  He followed them to London, through the customs and on to the train with an occasional raising of the eyebrow, and without uttering a single word. He couldn’t remember how he’d reached the address in the east end of London. All he recalled were people staring at him, in the street and on the strange tramcars, and often he checked on the string of his parcel to see that it was secure. Then gradually, people stared no longer. He saw other men, like himself, white-gaitered, long-coated, and carrying parcels. One even acknowledged him in his mother tongue. There were little shops too, like the ones back home, with barrels of herring and black olives standing outside. He was happy for the first time since he’d left home.

  His confidence grew and he entered one of the shops. and showed his piece of paper to the man behind the counter. The man looked up and spoke to him in Yiddish. Where had he come from? Who was he? And his father? What business was he in? Yes, things were getting worse, he knew. Every month, more and more were coming from the Heim. And things here not so good either. Anti-semitism? Plenty. What d’you want? Where there’s Jews, is anti-semitism. Do I make a living? Four daughters I’ve got. A living I’ve got to make. And how will you do, my boy? What living will you make? A Rabbi you want to be? Not enough Rabbonim we’ve got already. Well, everyone to his own geschäft. The man stopped suddenly, and stared at the stranger. Then, lifting the division of the counter, he said, ‘Come in. A glass lemon tea you should have. Reb Solomon lives a stone’s throw from here. My daughter will take you.’

  The kitchen was immediately behind the counter, and there they were, the four of them, and all alike from front and behind, turning away and giggling together. ‘Sadie. Sarah, Leah and Rachel,’ their father said, ticking off his progeny. ‘A glass lemon tea for our visitor.’

  They all headed for the samovar that was in the centre of the table. One of them smiled and it was to her that Abraham Zweck gave his heart. Immediately and eternally. She was about his age, a little younger perhaps.

  ‘Which one are you?’ he asked in Yiddish. The girls giggled together.

  ‘Goyim, they are my daughters. Only a mouthful of Yiddish between them. Sarah,’ he shouted, ‘tell the gentle. man your name.’

  She nodded her head. Yes, that was it, what her father had said. But she blushed with the effort to identify herself. Abraham Zweck took the tea that one of the others had handed to him. Everything was happening so quickly. Up until a few minutes ago, he had been a stranger, surrounded by all that was alien, laughed at, followed and humiliated.

  And suddenly, others had become like him. as it was at home, with the same clothes and language, with the same shops, the same struggle, and the same marriageable daughters. He felt a great sense of arrival. He put a lump of sugar in his mouth and sucked the tea noisily. Just as it was at home.

  ‘A Rabbi you shouldn’t bother with,’ the father was saying. ‘For you,’ he said, weighing him up as if after years of acquaintance, ‘business is better. Your own business, you marry, you have a family. No troubles.’ He was silent for a moment, taking stock of his own situation. He was no recommendation for his own advice. But he rallied quickly. ‘Specially with a wife to help,’ he went on. ‘Poor Chayala, when the girls were babies, she passed away. Another wife I should have taken,’ he mused, ‘but it’s never the same. Forget already the Rabbonischkeit,’ he almost shouted. ‘A business you should find. Your own business. Sarah,’ he called, ‘another glass tea for the gentleman.’

  They talked. Abraham’s town, his family, their problems. It was a familiar story. They were all the same, the städtels in the East, and now in the West too, bred from the same root. The shopkeeper’s Yiddish was fluent, but it was punctuated by the occasional English word, which, by the gist of the general meaning, Abraham Zweck was able to understand. In his first years in England, this was the way he was to pick up the language, collecting all these odd English throw-outs, for which the sp
eakers knew no Yiddish equivalent. Words like wardrobe, electric fire, conservative. Hundreds of single words that together gave Abraham Zweck a great vocabulary, but little language. His conversation became like his friends’, only in reverse. He would use Yiddish throw-outs in the brackets of his halting English. The people of the neighbourhood understood him as he did them, and they learnt more Yiddish from his speech. It was a mutual linguaphone.

  Sarah brought in the tea. Abraham smiled his thanks at her but she turned away, shyly. Her father patted her arm as she left the table. ‘My eldest,’ he said. ‘Like a little mother she is. Isn’t that right, Mammele?’ he called after her. She giggled with her sisters. The shopkeeper caught Abraham looking at her. He leaned over the table. ‘The best, she is, the best,’ he whispered.

  They drank their tea. Abraham once more asked directions to Reb Solomon’s house.

  ‘Sarah will show you,’ the shopkeeper said. ‘Is not far from here. Sarah, go get your coat.’ He turned to Abraham, and switching to Yiddish, said, ‘You want to go upstairs, perhaps?’

  Abraham wanted to stay and watch Sarah. But he was curious to see how closely a Jewish upstairs in England corresponded with his family’s at home. ‘Yes, he would go upstairs,’ he offered.

  The shopkeeper leaned over the bannister and directed him. When he was out of sight, Abraham wandered through the rooms. In one of them, he leaned against the door, and stared at the chest of drawers opposite him.

  Rabbi Zweck shuddered. There it was, still there, fifty years older, and still full of Sarah’s things. He re-focussed his eyes, and what had, in his remembrance, been ‘there’, now suddenly in his awakening, became ‘here’. Yes, this was the room in the house behind the shop that Sarah had inherited from her old father. He looked away from the chest to the bed, then to the pulled-out drawers and the terrible recollection of what he was doing.