Authors: Howard Jacobson
‘You see what the aphid swines have done to us? Now we’re fighting on behalf of names that don’t even belong to us. What’s your actual name? What did the whores call you in the good old days? Mr . . . ? Mr What? Or did you let them call you Eugene? Take me, Eugene. Use me, Eugene.’
If Kroplik isn’t mistaken, Gutkind blushes.
‘Whatever my name was then, I was too young to give it to whores.’
‘Your father then . . . your grandfather . . . how did the whores address them?’
These were infractions too far for Detective Inspector Gutkind, Wagner or no Wagner. He was not a man who had ever visited a whore. And nor, he knew in his soul, had any of the men in his family before him. It had always been ideal love they’d longed for. A beautiful woman, smelling of Prague or Vienna, light on their arm, transported into an ecstasy of extinction – the two of them breathing their last together . . .
ertrinken
. . .
versinken
. . .
unbewußt
. . .
höchste Lust!
. . .
Kroplik couldn’t go on waiting for him to expire. ‘Well mine
was Scannláin. Son of the Scannláins of Ludgvennok. And had been for two thousand bloody years. And then for a crime we didn’t commit, and not for any of the thousands we did . . . that’s the galling part—’
‘For a crime
no one
committed,’ Gutkind interjected.
Densdell Kroplik was past caring whether a crime had been committed or not. He held out his glass for another whisky. The high life – downing whisky in St Eber at
11
.
30
in the morning. The gods drinking to their exemption from the petty cares of mortals. Atop Valhalla, dust or no dust.
Gutkind sploshed whisky into Kroplik’s glass. He wanted him drunk and silent. He wanted him a thing of ears. Other than his cat, Eugene Gutkind had no one to talk to. His wife had left him. He had few friends in the force and no friends in St Eber. Who in St Eber did have friends? A few brawling mates and a headless wife to curse comprised happiness in St Eber, and he no longer even had the wife. So he rarely got the opportunity to pour out his heart. A detective inspector, anyway, had to measure his words. But he didn’t have to measure anything with Densdell Kroplik, least of all whisky. He wasn’t a kindred spirit. Wagner didn’t make him a kindred spirit. To Gutkind’s eye Kroplik lacked discrimination. Not knowing where to pin the blame he pinned it on everyone. A bad hater, if ever he saw one. A man lacking specificity. But he was still the nearest thing to a kindred spirit there was. ‘Drink,’ he said. ‘Drink to what we believe and know to be true.’
And when Densdell Kroplik was drunk enough not to hear what was being said to him, true or not true, and not to care either way, when he was half asleep on the couch with the icingsugar cat sitting on his face, Detective Inspector Eugene Gutkind began his exposition . . .
There had been no crime. No
Götterdämmerung
anyway. No last encounter with the forces of evil, no burning, and no renewal of the world. Those who should have perished had been forewarned
by men of tender conscience like Clarence Worthing who, though he longed to wipe the slate clean, could not betray the memory of his fragrant encounter with Ottilie or Naomi or Lieselotte, in the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. For what you have done to me, I wish you in hell, they said. But for what you have done to me I also wish you to be spared. Such are the contradictions that enter the hearts of men who know what it is to love and not be loved in return.The irony of it was not lost on Detective Inspector Gutkind. They owed their lives to a conspiracy of the inconsolable and the snubbed, these Ottilies and Lieselottes who had imbibed conspiracy with their mothers’ milk. They’d escaped betrayal, they who betrayed as soon as snap a finger.
So
WHAT HAPPENED
, in his view, was that
NOT MUCH HAD
. They had got out. Crept away like rats in the dark. That was not just supposition based on his cracking Clarence Worthing’s code. It was demonstrable fact. If there’d been a massacre where were the bodies? Where were the pits, where the evidence of funeral pyres and gallows trees, where the photographs or other recorded proof of burned-out houses, streets, entire suburbs? Believe the figures that had once been irresponsibly bandied about and the air should still be stinking with the destruction. They say you can smell extinction for centuries afterwards. Go to the Somme. You can see it in the soil. You can taste it in the potatoes.
He had done the maths, worked it out algebraically, done the measurements geometrically, consulted log tables – so many people killed in so many weeks in so many square metres . . . by whom? It would have taken half the population up in arms, and mightily skilled in the use of them, to have wreaked such destruction in so brief a period of time. No, there had been no
Götterdämmerung
.
He takes a swig from the bottle and looks at Kroplik with his head thrown back, his mouth open and his legs spread. What the hell is that inside his trousers? He regrets inviting him over. He is ashamed of his own loneliness. But there is so much to say, and no one to say it to.
He feels subtler than any man he knows. No
Götterdämmerung
does not mean, you fool, that there was no anything. First law of criminal investigation: everyone exaggerates. Second law of criminal investigation: just because everyone exaggerates doesn’t mean there’s nothing to investigate. In my profession, Mr Kroplik, we don’t say there is no smoke without fire. Rumour is also a crime. False accusation – you can go down for that. But that said, there
is
always a fire. Somewhere, something is forever burning. That’s why no accusation is ever entirely wasted. Eventually we will find a culprit for any crime. So yes,
WHAT HAPPENED
happened in that there was minor disturbance and insignificant destruction. To win another of their propaganda wars they did what they had done for centuries and put on another of their pantomimes of persecution. Allowed the spilling of a little blood to justify their disappearing, while no one was looking, with their accumulated loot. A sacrificial people, my great-grandfather called them, and as one of their sacrifices himself, he knew. But they also sacrifice their own. There’s a name for it but I’ve forgotten it.You’ll probably know it, Kroplik, you unedifying piss-ant. Like a caste system. You probably didn’t know they had a caste system, but my word they did. This one can’t light a candle, that one can’t go near a body. Some can’t even touch a woman unless they’re wearing surgical gloves. And some know it’s their job to die when the time comes. It’s not as unselfish as it sounds. Their children get looked after and they go straight to heaven. Not to lie with virgins, that’s someone else. This lot go straight to heaven and read books. For the honour of which they put themselves in the way of trouble, announce themselves in the street by what they wear, hang identifying objects in the windows of their houses where they wait patiently to be burned alive. Here! Over here!
The shouting doesn’t wake Kroplik who sleeps like the dead.
I, my rat-arsed friend, Gutkind continues, am a policeman. I know the difference between right and wrong. Wrong is burning someone alive in his own house, I don’t care if he invited you in
and handed you the box of matches.You can always say no. Sure, you were provoked. Criminals are always provoked. An open door, a short dress, a handbag left unzipped. Don’t get me wrong – I sympathise. I’m not beyond a provocation or two myself. Right this minute I’m provoked into violent thoughts by the sight of you snoring on my sofa. But I restrain myself from cutting off your balls. That’s what makes me not a villain.
But keep wrongdoing in proportion is another of my mottos. Not everything is the greatest crime in history.
He rubs his face and drinks.
No sir!
And drinks some more.
You’ll have your own favourite greatest crime in history, Mr Historian of the Gods of Ludgvennok, but I can tell you this wasn’t it. And why wasn’t it?
Because of this! He smites his heart.
Would he have done what Clarence Worthing did had he been in his position? Would he have assisted in their escape? Tears flood his eyes. The sublime music swells in his ears . . .
ertrinken
. . .
versinken
. . .
unbewußt
. . .
höchste Lust
! . . . Yes, he and Clarence Worthing are one, made weak and strong by love.
Finishing off what is left in the bottle, he rejoins Densdell Kroplik on the couch where, exhausted by the intensity of his own emotion, he falls immediately asleep on Kroplik’s shoulder, the convulsing cat, heaving up fur balls coated in clay dust, between them.
It’s only a shame no family photographer is in attendance.
ii
It’s Kroplik who wakes first, still drunk. It takes him a moment or two to work out where he is. Though it’s only early afternoon it’s dark already in St Eber, the shabby pyramids of clay, as though each is lit from within by a small candle, the sole illumination.
Is this Egypt?
Then he notices that the cat has coughed up a puddle of chinaclay slime on the lapel of his one smart suit. Or is it Gutkind’s doing? It smells as though it’s been in Gutkind’s stomach. Kroplik clutches his own. He lives on a daily diet of indignity but this is one insult he doesn’t have to bear. He has brought his razor along to give the detective inspector a close shave as a token of his friendship and regard. But he is too angry to be a friend. Slime! From Gutkind’s poisoned gut! On his one good suit!
He is aware that Gutkind has been ranting at him while he slept. The usual subject – villainy. Was he telling him he knew – teasing him, taunting him with his knowledge. I know the difference between right and wrong Kroplik is sure he heard him say through his stupor. Provocation is no defence. This time . . .
Is this why he was invited over?
It amazes him that Gutkind should have the brains to solve a crime. Yes, he’d as good as laid it out for him a hundred times, but Gutkind had struck him as too dumb to see what was in front of his face.
I’ve underestimated him, Kroplik decides. I’ve fatally underestimated the cunt. And laughs appreciatively at his own choice of words. Make a good final chapter heading for the next volume of his history – no, not ‘The Cunt’, but ‘A Fatal Underestimation’.
He thinks about taking out his razor, putting it to Gutkind’s throat, and confessing.What would the policeman do then? Throw up some more? Then he has a better idea. He staggers to his feet and closes the curtains. I’ll just cut his throat and have done, he has decided.
But it’s the cat that gets it first.
SEVEN
Nussbaum Unbound
i
E
SME
N
USSBAUM LAY
in what the doctors called a coma for two months after the motorcyclist rode the pavement and knocked her down. To her it was a long and much-needed sleep. A chance to think things over without interruption. Regain perspective. And maybe lose a little weight.
She wasn’t joking about the weight. She was done with looking comfortable and unthreatening. It was time to show more bone. Splintered bone, she laughed to herself, causing the screen to bleep, though she didn’t doubt the bone would mend eventually. It wasn’t that she’d been incapable of causing discomfort when discomfort needed to be caused. She was known to be a woman who sometimes asked troublesome questions. But there’d been no real spike inside her. She could annoy without quite inspiring fear. Now she fancied being someone else. No, now she
was
someone else. Someone with sharper edges, all spikes. Broken, she was more frightening.
Already her thoughts were unlike any she’d had before. They flew at her. In her previous, comfortable life she would reason her way to a conclusion, which meant that she could be reasoned out of it in time as well. The motorcycle hadn’t really been necessary. There were other ways of making her conformable . . .
Comfortable and Conformable – her middle names. Esme C. C. Nussbaum. Always a word-monger, an anagramatiser, a
palindromaniac, she now saw words three-dimensionally in her sleep. Comfortable and Conformable cavorted lewdly on the ceiling of her unconsciousness, pressing their podgy bellies together like middle-aged lovers, blowing into each other’s ears, two becoming one. She smiled inside herself. It really was a pleasure lying here, waiting for what words would get up to next, what thoughts would come whooshing at her. She liked being the subject of their discussions. It was like listening in to gossip about herself. No, she wasn’t as Comfortable or Conformable as she blamed herself for being, was the latest revelation. If she’d been that easy to get on with, what was she doing here, lying in a coma, half dead? She must have put the wind up someone. That was one of the most persistent of her winged thoughts: people frighten easily. Another was: people – ordinary people, people you think you know and like – want to kill you.
She was not herself frightened when such thoughts flew at her. She had once watched an old horror film with her parents about a blonde woman being attacked by birds. They had been terrified as a family. They put their hands over their faces as the birds divebombed everyone in the blonde’s vicinity. ‘Avenging some great but never to be disclosed wrong,’ her father said. But lying flat with thoughts flying at her was not like that. She didn’t feel assailed. There was no more they could do to her – that partly explained her calm acceptance of their presence, even when they swooped so low she might justifiably have worried for her eyes. But it was more than being beyond terror. She welcomed their violence. It was Conformable with how she felt.They were
thoughts
, after all, which meant they originated in her. If this was herself massing above her, screeching, well then . . . she extended all the hospitality she had to offer. It was about time. A good time, yes, in that she had bags of it to give; but
about
time in the sense that she had wasted too much of it thinking thoughts that were less . . . less what? How nice it was having all the time in the world to find the right word. Less . . . less . . . Esme Nussbaum knew
more words than was good for her. She had been the school Scrabble champion; she could finish a crossword while others were still on the first clue; she knew words even her teachers thought did not exist. Now she raided her store for a word that had bird in it, that sounded avian, an av word. Avirulent had a ring, but it meant the opposite of what she needed it to mean. She didn’t want to lose the virulence, she wanted to store it. Avile was good – to avile, as she’d had to explain to a sceptical Scrabble opponent in the quarter-finals, meaning to make vile, to debase. But there was no adjective to go with it that she knew of. No avilious. And no noun, no aviliousness. Had there been, then aviliousness was exactly the quality her previous, unwinged thoughts had lacked. They had been too moderate. Too sparing.Yes, she had presented a report, for which they’d killed her – in intention, if not in fact – that spoke of the persistent rage she’d found in the course of monitoring the nation’s mood. She had not tried to sugar that pill. We cannot, she had argued, glide over the past with an
IF
. We must confront
WHAT HAPPENED
, not to apportion blame – it was too late for that, anyway – but to know what it was and why time hadn’t healed it. Yes, she had stood her ground, said what had to be said, done her best to persuade the
IFFERS
with whom she worked, but that best wasn’t good enough. She hadn’t followed the logic of her own findings. She had been insufficiently avilious. She hadn’t made vile, that’s to say she hadn’t grasped, hadn’t penetrated and presented, even to herself, the vileness of what had been done. Not
WHAT HAD HAPPENED
but
WHAT HAD BEEN
DONE
.