The Elected Member Read online

  And so he went, to make a public spectacle of himself, so that everyone would know and whisper, ‘His great brain is too heavy for him, his genius has driven him mad.’ That after all, was the best that Rabbi Zweck could hope for. That people would think that it was Norman’s mind that had so shaken him. Not the drugs. Nothing like that. Not the drugs. Even insanity, when closely investigated, allowed for a certain threshold of acceptability. To be driven mad by one’s own genius, that was something, that was respectable, an inverted nachus almost. But from drugs, that was unpardonable, . that was another matter altogether. So Rabbi Zweck and Bella had followed him to court.

  They sat in the back row, not because they wanted a quick getaway, they were both prepared to sit it through, whatever the outcome, but because, at the back, they felt more protected, less vulnerable. Around them in the court, their neighbourhood had gathered, transplanted from the area in a body. Most of them secretly hoped for Bertie’s acquittal, not because they thought him innocent but because they wanted to punish Mrs Steinberg, for bringing the matter into the public eye. Jews couldn’t be too careful, and it was only asking for trouble if you brought such a squalid exchange into the open. But whatever the outcome, they would be treated to a drama, and to the sight of their home-spun genius, Norman Zweck, thirteen languages he spoke so it was said, Norman, the boy who’d made good, of whom, since his infancy, they’d heard so much. It was an outing that the neighbourhood had looked forward to for weeks.

  Rabbi Zweck’s eyes wandered furtively around the court. He noticed how the women had dressed themselves, and on a weekday too. ‘A Yomtov they make of it,’ he said to himself. Some Yomtov. He watched Norman take his seat, and inwardly prayed for him. He disregarded the preliminary paraphernalia of the court proceedings, resting his head on his chest, willing that it would all soon be over. He heard a sudden silence, and then a shuffling of seats, and then his son’s voice, stating in cold and somewhat contemptuous tones, the matter of the dispute between the two parties. There was silence as he spoke, broken only by the occasional smacking of lips from the gallery, in anticipation of the treat that was to come. Norman’s delivery was lucid and controlled, so much so, that as he progressed with his speech, Rabbi Zweck was able to relax. Bella pressed his arm with her own sense of relief. ‘It’s all right,’ she whispered, ‘he’s doing very well.’ Rabbi Zweck looked around the court. He felt safe enough even to display his pride publicly. He smiled at one or two of his neighbours, acknowledging their nods of congratulation. He felt suddenly well-disposed towards them, and was glad that they had dressed up for the occasion. Norman was going to make it worth their while. His Norman. His clever son, Norman. Doesn’t matter what that Dr Levy said. Maybe Norman was right, after all. Dr Levy was only trying to frighten him when he said that Norman was slowly committing suicide. Apart from the sleeplessness, Norman was carrying on with his job. Norman was right. He kept saying the pills were good for him. They made him articulate and worthy of respect. He would tell Dr Levy himself. Pity he wasn’t in the court to see his son. ‘These psychiatrists,’ Rabbi Zweck muttered to himself, ‘meshuggana, all of them.’

  He heard Mrs Steinberg’s name being called, and watched her as she stepped onto the stand. Mrs Steinberg had not dressed for the occasion. She wore a work-a-day hat and coat and clutched a well-worn leather hold-all that she normally used for her shopping. Norman had probably had a hand in her attire. The magistrate would be more impressed by a simply-dressed hard-working woman, whose sole concern in the case was for justice and not for gain. She took the oath and waited nervously for Norman to begin.

  ‘Mrs Steinberg,’ he said, ‘would you tell the court in your own words what happened on the morning of Tuesday, April 30?’

  Mrs Steinberg cupped her lips with her hands. ‘It all started before then, you know it did,’ she hissed at him, hoping that only he would hear.

  Norman ignored her plea. ‘Mrs Steinberg,’ he repeated, ‘take your time and tell us the whole story. Let us begin when your mother passed away.’

  ‘But it not the beginning at all,’ she hissed again. ‘Let me tell them everything.’ She dropped her hands to her sides. ‘What for do I pay you?’ she shouted. ‘So you should hide the story of my good-for-nothing brother, the ganuf he is. All his life a ganuf. Let them know,’ she shouted sweeping her arms over her public.

  The gallery warmed to her audibly so that the magistrate had to call for silence. ‘Would the witness confine herself to answering Counsel’s questions,’ he said.

  Mrs Steinberg turned to the magistrate helplessly. ‘The wrong questions he asks,’ she pleaded.

  ‘Proceed.’ The magistrate nodded at Norman with undeniable authority.

  ‘Mrs Steinberg,’ Norman tried again, ‘would you tell the court what happened the day your mother died.’

  Mrs Steinberg sighed heavily. To start in the middle was no easy task. But she rallied. ‘Well,’ she said, drawing breath, ‘my mother, Olav hashalom, a very sick woman she was. I should know.’ She leaned forward confidentially. ‘Ten years I looked after her, up and down, up and down, to and fro, to and fro,’ she amended, remembering her mother’s downstairs bedroom. ‘Everything she wanted, she gets. She wants wireless, she gets; she wants televiscious, she gets; she wants hot water-bottle, she gets. Everything she gets. Should I deny her?’

  Mrs Steinberg paused while the gallery settled in for her story. Most of them had heard it many times before, but in the market or around her kitchen table, but there was always the possibility of ornamentation with a change of venue.

  ‘Well,’ Mrs Steinberg continued, ‘my poor mother, she doesn’t get any better and….’

  ‘Would the witness come to the point?’ the magistrate interrupted.

  ‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ she shouted at him. ‘All in good time.’

  ‘Where was I?’ she said.

  ‘It was the morning of Tuesday, April 30, the day your mother passed away.’ Norman put her back on the rails. ‘What happened after your mother died?’

  ‘You want that already?’ she said, disappointed.

  ‘What happened after your mother died?’ Norman repeated. His voice was gentle and persuasive, so Mrs Steinberg went ahead and told him the whole story.

  In the cross-examination that followed, there was little that Bertie’s barrister could do to topple Mrs Steinbergs tale, and when Mr Steinberg went into the box it was corroborated in exact detail. It was the first time for many years that the pair had agreed about anything. Their story was unshakeable. Things were going very well for Norman, and Rabbi Zweck by now had lost all his apprehension. He leaned forward to get better view of his son, regretting that they had had insufficient faith in him to take a seat in the front of the court.

  Then it was Bertie’s turn in the box, and Norman to cross-examine. Rabbi Zweck watched his son very closely. He felt that Norman was about to show some of the old genius that had singled him out, as a younger man, to be the most brilliant up-and-coming barrister of his time. His son, his clever son, Norman.

  ‘Why did you leave the house so quickly?’ Norman was saying.

  ‘I was overcome.’ It was a word Bertie had used often during the proceedings. He dearly liked it, though it sat ill-at-ease on him, rough as he was, and apparently without any great sensitivity. ‘I was overcome,’ he said again. ‘I wanted to get away from there. I couldn’t stand it any longer.’

  ‘You were overcome,’ Norman echoed. ‘You were overcome with guilt, perhaps?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Bertie said. He sensed that it was a leading question and he didn’t want to commit himself one way or the other.

  ‘What would you have felt guilty about?’ Norman said. Bertie stared at him.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Norman helped him along, ‘you felt guilty that over the last few years, you had spent very little time with your mother?’

  ‘I saw her,’ Bertie mumbled, ‘I saw her from time to time.’

  ‘How often in the last year did
you visit her?’ Norman pursued.

  Bertie drummed his fingers on the rail. Every visit was recallable, since each one was associated with some crisis or another. When he’d wanted money, or when he’d wanted to look for her will, or simply to grab what he could from his sister’s home. He counted out his visits in terms of loot. There was the silver candlestick, a watch, a camera, add an electric clock. Must get rid of that clock. It was still under his bed in his room. Well, that made at least four visits.

  He could safely add a couple in which he’d had to cut his losses.

  ‘Half a dozen times,’ he said airily.

  ‘That makes once every two months,’ Norman said. ‘Over the last year, your mother was very ill. Dying, in fact. Would you not say, that in view of the circumstances, your visits were highly infrequent?’

  Bertie shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Did you perhaps live too far away from your mother that a long journey would have been of considerable inconvenience?’

  ‘Huh,’ Mrs Steinberg sneered from her seat. ‘A stone’s throw he lives,’ she contributed.

  The magistrate silenced her, but she had made her point.

  ‘Where in fact do you live?’ Norman asked. He wanted it from Bertie’s mouth.

  ‘In Flood Street.’

  ‘How far would you say that was from your sister’s home, where your mother lay dying?’

  ‘Five minutes?’ Bertie questioned.

  ‘Are you saying five minutes on foot, or five minutes by public transport?’ Norman asked, who knew very well where Flood Street was.

  ‘On foot,’ Bertie said limply.

  ‘Then it was no great inconvenience for you to visit your dying mother because of the matter of distance,’ Norman concluded. ‘Then perhaps,’ he went on, ‘you were prevented from visiting her by your employment?’

  ‘Huh,’ Mrs Steinberg couldn’t resist it. ‘Employment,’ she sneered, ‘a low good-for-nothing lobbos. Who should employ him? Huh,’ she added.

  The magistrate knocked his knuckles impatiently on the bench. ‘I have to warn your client,’ he said, addressing himself to Norman, that any further interruptions will result in an adjournment of the case.

  ‘Shush,’ Mr Steinberg nudged his wife. Norman looked over to his client reprovingly, then continued with his examination.

  ‘Where are you employed, Mr Cass?’

  ‘I’m unemployed at the moment,’ Bertie said.

  ‘And how long have you been unemployed?’

  ‘On and off about three years.’

  ‘So,’ Norman went on hurriedly, ‘at the time of your mother’s illness, you were not prevented by distance or employment from visiting her.’

  Bertie was silent, and Norman allowed the pause. ‘Would you call yourself a good son, Mr Cass?’ Norman looked over at Mrs Steinberg and was just in time to see her husband clap his hand over her mouth. He smiled in gratitude to Mr Steinberg for giving him the freedom of the floor.

  ‘Well, I loved her,’ Bertie said simply.

  ‘But not enough to spend time with her apparently,’ Norman said.

  Again Bertie was silent, while his counsel fidgeted. Rabbi Zweck relaxed again. Norman had the situation well in hand.

  ‘Tell me in your own words,’ Norman said, ‘what happened on your last visit to your mother. When she had already passed away.’

  ‘Well,’ Bertie began, ‘my sister sent a message she had gone. I ran round there and into her room. She was lying on the bed. She … she was dead. I went and sat by the bed and I looked at her.’ He paused. ‘And I was overcome,’ he added hastily.

  ‘Where were her hands as she lay there?’ Norman asked.

  ‘On the sheet, lying by her side.’

  ‘So in your position, sitting by the bed, you were able to see her hands very clearly.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Describe them to me.’

  ‘Well, they were a bit blue, and there were veins sticking out on them, and they looked very old, and …well …they were just like … hands. Just hands. And oh, there was red polish on the nails. Chipped a bit. It made me feel sort of sick.’

  ‘And the fingers?’ Norman asked.

  ‘Well … they were just ordinary fingers.’

  ‘Anything on them,’ Norman threw off casually.

  ‘No,’ Bertie rapped out. ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘Nothing at all?’ Norman whispered.

  Something in his voice, the sudden quiet, the sudden fear, caused Rabbi Zweck to tighten his stomach. He saw with pain the look on his son’s face. It was a look that he knew well, a look that sweated out of his face, oozing from every pore. The silver-fish look that consorted hand in glove with the hallucination.

  ‘Nothing at all?’ Norman threatened. He leaned forward, his hands thrown out in a gesture of despair. ‘There was a ring,’ he thundered.

  ‘It wasn’t there,’ Bertie said, drawing back and looking round the court for confirmation of his own sense of foreboding.

  Norman darted towards him, his face only a hair’s breadth from the witness. ‘It wasn’t there?’ he screamed.

  The public leaned forward, the magistrate too, a bewildered look crossing his face, not knowing whether to ascribe Norman’s outburst to derangement or mere histrionics. A murmur went through the gallery, and Bella, fearing the outcome of it all, clutched her father’s arm, not daring to look at him, but knowing that his eyes were glazed with tears, fixed there by fear and a foretaste of disaster.

  Bertie backed away as far as he could in the stand. He looked at the magistrate for guidance, but none was forth-coming. He had heard rumours of Norman’s behaviour. Norman was a whispered word in the neighbourhood, probably because of his genius, a whisper that was a stifled reference to something that was not quite understood. But madness or genius, both were baitable. ‘No,’ he said defiantly, ‘like I said, it wasn’t there.’

  Norman shook his head, unbelieving. He dropped his hands to his sides, and shrunk backwards to his stand. Rabbi Zweck watched him sadly. He knew that helpless gesture, that unfailing response to, ‘They’re not there. It’s your imagination.’ Bertie’s denial had been for Norman a personal affront. For the last two years, his waking hours had been punctuated by just that kind of smug assertion. ‘It’s not there, it’s not there.’

  ‘Of course it was there,’ Rabbi Zweck muttered. ‘You know, Bertie Cass, you know bloody well it was there. Tell him, tell him,’ he pleaded, ‘tell my son it was there.’

  Norman folded his arms. His body seemed to relax. He even smiled a little. The audience and the presiding magistrate were relieved. His outburst had obviously been tactical; he had tried to threaten Bertie into admission. Now, that line having failed, he was about to try another. But Rabbi Zweck and Bella felt no such relief. Norman’s smile was frighteningly familiar. They knew it as a prelude to argument, to his patient insistence that all were mad and only he was sane. They clutched each other’s hands.

  ‘Well, Mr Cass,’ Norman said politely, ‘you say that it wasn’t there. Good enough. Now tell me, Mr Cass, how long had your mother been dead when you came to see her?’ Bertie did not see the relevance of the question, but he could find no threat in it. ‘I don’t know,’ he said amicably. He was grateful for Norman’s friendly tone. ‘I came as soon as I was called. So perhaps she had been dead for about an hour.’

  ‘Good enough,’ Norman said. ‘Very shortly after death, as you know full well, Mr Cass, a rot sets into the body. You would agree with that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Bertie said. He was not altogether happy with Norman’s respectful tone. ‘I don’t know anything about those things.’

  ‘Well, that is so, Mr Cass. It is a fact that could be confirmed by any pathologist.’

  The audience leaned forward curious about the purpose of Norman’s discourse. They expected a trap, and marvelled at its gentlemanly laying.

  ‘Did you see any worms on your mother?’ Norman’s arms were still folded, an
d his smile was ingratiating.

  ‘No, of course not,’ Bertie said, offended by his bad taste. ‘Your mother was dead long enough for worms,’ Norman said. ‘But you didn’t see them’.

  ‘No,’ Bertie said again.

  ‘I understand that you didn’t see them,’ Norman said generously. ‘You were too overcome. You were in a state of acute distress. Yet you can take my word for it, Mr Cass, the worms were there all right, and it was quite natural in your state of shock that you didn’t see them.’

  Bertie nodded dubiously.

  ‘So you would agree,’ Norman went on, ‘that certain things can be present, yet you cannot see them, especially if you are in a state of shock.’

  Bertie kept his mouth firmly shut.

  ‘Therefore,’ Norman went on, ‘there might well have been a ring on your late mother’s finger, and you, in your state of profound despair, didn’t see it.’

  ‘If I didn’t see it,’ Bertie said without hesitation, ‘then I couldn’t have taken it, could I?’ He sighed with his triumph.

  ‘Exactly,’ Norman said. ‘You most certainly couldn’t have taken it, if you couldn’t see it, whether it was there or not.’

  ‘I am not quite clear where this line of questioning is leading,’ the magistrate said.

  ‘I hope to make myself clear very shortly.’

  There was nothing disturbing or untoward in Norman’s manner. He was relaxed still, and smiling, and even Rabbi Zweck thought for a moment that he had been misled. Yet it did appear that Norman’s line of questioning indicated that he was changing sides.

  ‘So you didn’t see it, Mr Cass,’ Norman was saying. ‘Yet we know that a ring was present and that it was taken. Therefore we must assume, must we not, that it was taken by someone who was able to see it.’

  Bertie nodded, bewildered.